Delhi school gets bomb threat, police declare it hoax after 5-hr op

Students at The Indian School in south Delhi’s Sadiq Nagar were evacuated late on Wednesday morning after the institute received an email warning of explosives, following which multiple units of the Delhi Police carried out prolonged searches of the school’s premises, officers aware of the matter said.

After a five-hour search operation, the police concluded that it was likely a hoax email. “A minute and thorough checking of the school premises was undertaken… The email threat appears to be a hoax,” said Chandan Chowdhary, deputy commissioner of police (south).

Officers said the school received the email on its official email address at 10.49am, following which a member of the staff, identified by a single name, Brijesh, informed the police. The first police team reached the school premises at around 11am, followed by bomb detection and bomb disposal squads, sniffer dogs and SWAT teams of the Delhi Police.

The school, meanwhile, began evacuating the students. “Our teachers are well-trained to react to such a situation. We followed our drill and immediately began sending our students to the far-end of the school premises,” said school principal Tania Joshi.

Students said many of them were made to assemble at the playground. “We were calling our parents using the mobile phones of our teachers and others,” said a student of class 9.

Many of the 2,500-odd students attending the morning shift of the school were new admissions, but teachers said they were careful to pay attention to each student. “There are 40 students in my class. My responsibility was to ensure each of those children were in my sight and handed over carefully to their wards or loaded in their school cabs,” said a teacher, who declined to be named.

Parents of the students said they received messages on WhatsApp, urging them to collect their wards from the school due to “security issues”.

“I received a call from an unknown mobile phone number. My nine-year-old daughter was at the other end, telling me to quickly reach the school. My child didn’t know it was a bomb threat and I feared she was injured while playing,” said Anita Gangadhar, a parent.

On Josip Broz Tito Marg, a traffic snarl built up, exacerbated by the closure of one carriageway of the nearby Chirag Delhi flyover, leading to delays of up to 30 minutes for commuters. “The jam lasted about 90 minutes due to the crowd of parents, transporters as well as onlookers, but we deployed additional traffic personnel to handle the situation,” said a traffic police officer.

A little after 3pm, five hours after police began their search operations, officers signalled an end, with DCP Chowdhary saying that it was likely a hoax.

Wednesday was the second time in five months that the school received a bomb threat — on November 28, 2022, another email about a bomb on the school premises forced a similar evacuation and a search operation. “We urged the police to catch the culprit in that case, but we didn’t get to know anything about the sender,” said principal Joshi.

DCP Chowdhary said in the case of the November email, the sender remains unidentified as the IP address used was in Germany. She said police are probing whether Wednesday’s email was sent from the same IP address.