The Delhi Police's anti-terror unit, probing the bomb threats received by over 130 schools in the Delhi-NCR region on Wednesday, said the investigation will focus on an organisation rather than an individual. Sources within the Delhi police said the threat seemed to be part of a big conspiracy.
"The timing of the threat given the elections, mass collection of data from schools, use of Russian IP addresses --all these point towards a conspiracy," sources told ANI.
The probe will also explore whether ISI may be involved or any Chinese involvement. "The use of a strong server has raised suspicions regarding China. But, the investigation is still at a very early stage," the sources added.
The Special Cell of Delhi Police has registered an FIR against unidentified people under Section 120B of IPC and IPC 506 in the case of threatening emails to schools.
The police on Wednesday night had said that the email id used to send the threat was 'sawariim@mail.ru'. "Sawarim is an Arabic word extensively used by the terror outfit Islamic State (IS) in their propaganda videos over the past several years," the official said.
"Kill them wherever you meet and drive them out of the places from which they drove you. There are many explosive devices in the school...," reads the identical email sent to all schools.
"The main agenda of sending such threat emails in bulk is to create panic and wage a cyber war by some terror group," an officer, who did not wish to be named, told PTI.
"The domain of email ID sawariim@mail.ru has been traced to Russia and is suspected to have been formed with the help of the dark web, which is an encrypted online content that allows individuals to hide their identity and location from others," he said.
Over 130 schools in the Delhi-NCR area received an identical bomb threat by email early Wednesday, triggering mass evacuations and searches as panic-stricken parents rushed to pick up their children. The threat was declared a hoax as "nothing objectionable" was found during searches, the police said.
