Three five-star hotels in Bengaluru on Thursday received bomb threats via e-mail, PTI reported, citing police sources. However, it turned out to be a hoax.
Following this, search operations began at the premises.
The threat comes in the backdrop of a low-intensity bomb blast in Rameshwaram Cafe in the city on March 1, leading to nine people being injured.
A day later, a bomb threat email was sent to Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, his deputy D K Shivakumar, other ministers and senior government officials demanding a $2.5 million ransom, reported The Indian Express.
“What are your thoughts on the movie trailer? If you don’t provide us with 2.5 million dollars, we will cause large explosions on buses, trains, temples, hotels and public areas throughout Karnataka,” the email sent with the subject line ‘Explosion alert 02’ said.
The email, referring to the Karnataka State Road Transportation Corporation’s luxury bus service, said, “We want to show you one more trailer. We are going to explode the next one in the Ambari Utsav bus. After the Ambari Utsav bus blast, we will raise our demands on social media. And will upload screenshots of the mail sent to you on social media. We will tweet information about the next explosion.”
Police had said that the email was received from the ID ‘shahidkhan10786@protonmail.com’ and suspected that the the accused may have used the Tor browser, which allows one to browse anonymously with a differemt IP address.
On December 1 last year, 68 schools in Bengaluru and rural schools ad received the bomb that emails. The emails were identical and sent using addresses registered with Beeble.com – a Cyprus-based end-to-end encrypted email service provider.