Amritsar police fail to make breakthrough in Golden Temple email threat case

More than a month after threatening emails were received by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), threatening to blow up the Golden Temple, the city police are yet to make a significant breakthrough in the case.

Since July 4, the Shiromani committee had received around 20 threatening emails from unknown persons.

Police officials are tight-lipped over developments in the case, though highly placed sources said help had been sought from a US-based software company to find out the origin of the emails. Nevertheless, they were yet to get any response from them.

The city police had earlier arrested a man, identified as Shubham Dubey from Faridabad in Haryana, following some technical probe. His laptop and mobile phone were seized and sent for forensic analysis. However, the police could not go beyond this and they have yet to find anything substantial regarding the threatening emails.

A senior police official on condition of anonymity said the unknown miscreants had been using “Dark Net” and “virtual private network” for sending the emails.

“Dark Net” is a network within the Internet that can only be accessed with specific software, configurations and authorisation.

A senior police official and IT expert pointed out that it is extremely difficult to trace the IP addresses in the ‘Dark Net’ because of its software that encrypts and reroutes traffic through multiple servers, thereby obscuring the user’s real IP address. It also employs virtual private network besides enhancing other privacy-enhancing mechanisms, complicating it further to pinpoint the original location of the sender.

Yesterday, the Punjab and Haryana High Court also received a similar threatening email, which was the second in the past couple of months. Earlier, a similar RDX blast threat was received at Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee International Airport here putting Central security agencies like the CISF and Punjab Police on their toes.

Not only the Golden Temple, many religious, historical and strategically important places in the country had also received similar threats during the past several months, putting intelligence and security agencies in the country on alert.

Amritsar Police Commissioner Gurpreet Singh Bhullar said investigations were on, but the details cannot be shared at this moment.