Bomb hoax accused ‘linked’ to NGO that backed Afzal Guru

The Delhi Police investigating the series of 'hoax' bomb threats for a year have found out that the accused boy, who had sent threats to around 400 schools, is linked to an NGO having “political links”.

According to a senior Delhi Police officer, the NGO is known for advocacy of one particular political party in the public domain. As the cops further analysed the NGO, it was found that it had opposed the hanging of convicted terrorist Afzal Guru, in the past and had been openly supporting the political party through social media.

While the police did not reveal the name of the political party, the BJP, in a press conference accused the Aam Aadmi Party and demanded a clear response from it on the matter.

Delhi had been grappling with back-to-back bomb hoaxes that targeted schools, hospitals and other public places. While some cases were solved with students themselves sending the threat emails, a majority of them had remained a hard nut to crack.

Sharing details of the case, the senior officer said around 23 schools in Delhi received threat emails on January 8 warning of bombs planted on their premises, causing panic, school closures, and disruption of academic activities. As most of the emails targeted south Delhi schools, the cyber police station of South District launched a technical analysis.

The officer said advanced cyber forensic techniques were employed to trace the origin of the threat emails and the accused teenager was identified using “digital footprints" and "email tracking mechanisms”. “He was traced to his residence, where a search operation was conducted and one laptop and two mobile phones were confiscated," the officer said. It revealed that the teen was involved in several instances of threat emails to more than ‘400 schools in Delhi”.