New Delhi: The multiple incidents of hoax bomb threats to schools across Delhi reported this week have forced a shutdown in many institutions right at the onset of pre-board examinations of class 12 students. Several have received threat emails this month.
What started as a panic situation in these private schools has turned into a “trend”—as a parent remarked—with recurring threats throughout the year. In May, 100 schools had received bomb threats simultaneously—the highest number of such threats received in one day. No arrests have, however, been made by the Delhi Police so far.
It usually starts with the school administration receiving an anonymous email in the middle of the night or early morning. As the students get ready to begin their classes in the morning, an announcement is made as soon as the email is read by the authorities, and the students and staff are evacuated. This is followed by personnel from the fire department, local police, bomb detection team and dog squad conducting a search. By the end of these searches, no bombs are found.
“What we have noticed is that it often happens at the time of parent-teacher meetings and examinations. Though we are not sure if these are students playing pranks because the IP address is always traced to places, like Hong Kong and the United States,” Aprajita Gautam, president of Delhi Parents Association, told ThePrint.
The emails received by schools this week reportedly claimed that there were “many explosives” in the school premises, powerful enough to “destroy the building and harm people”. In one such email, the sender even demanded $30,000.
The IP address of one of the emails was traced to a student’s home, who had sent a bomb threat to his own school in Paschim Vihar. After questioning, the student confessed, and was later counselled and released with a warning. The student, however, was not related to the series of bomb threat emails sent to different schools this past week.
With frequent bomb threats, parents and school authorities in the national capital fear that someone might take advantage of the prank or hoax, and end up hurting young students. “It happens so often now that we are getting used to these bomb threats. Even the students are not scared anymore. What if there’s an actual bomb someday?” Gautam remarked.
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Protocol after a bomb threat
On 26 April, 2023, a hoax bomb call at DPS Mathura Road had caused widespread panic. After several Delhi schools began reporting bomb threats this year, in April, the Delhi High Court urged the police and government to establish a standard operating procedure (SOP) for managing such threats to schools. A parent’s petition in the high court highlighted the need for a uniform action plan to address bomb threats and ensure proper responses to real dangers.
The police’s current protocol includes immediate site visits by the Station House Officer and team, and informing bomb disposal squads, fire services, traffic police and disaster management authorities.
Moreover, according to the SOP, schools are required to implement structural changes to enhance security and conduct regular mock drills.
Hoax calls trigger criminal proceedings, with investigations managed by the district’s cyber police station under the district Deputy Commissioner of Police’s supervision. An enquiry report must be submitted after hoax threats to improve accountability and preparedness.
What concerned parents say
Among the schools which received threat emails demanding money was Bhatnagar School in New Delhi’s Paschim Vihar. On Monday morning, after Kriti Grover’s two children—students of class 5 and 10—left for school, she received a notification that the school had been closed due to a bomb threat. It was at least the fifth time this year that the school received a threat, Grover told ThePrint.
But every time she is informed about the threat, she starts panicking about the safety of her children. “At this point we are not even sure what is happening,” she said, adding the safety of children should be the priority of every school.
Due to the latest bomb threat, Grover’s son’s pre-board examinations were postponed.”Now the examination will be conducted next Monday. His examinations were supposed to end by Thursday. This is a waste of time.”
She added that while the schools are trying to keep children safe in this situation, the Delhi government is putting students’ lives “at risk”. “Kejriwal says he is our son and brother. But what safety is he providing to our children?”
Rajeev Sharma, whose daughter studies in Delhi Police Public School, said that he and his wife had left for work as usual last week after their daughter went to school, when he got a call. She had been asked to go home as the school had been shut down due to “emergency circumstances”.
“She had to take an auto and come home. This situation is not safe, especially for a girl,” Sharma, a Delhi Police officer, told ThePrint.
The parents were later informed over WhatsApp that the school had been closed due to a bomb threat. This was the second time the school had received a threat, causing parents like Sharma to panic. “Our biggest concern is the security and safety of our children. If anything adverse happens, the school will be responsible for it.”
Meanwhile another parent, Pankaj Gupta whose two children study in Maharaja Agrasen Public School in New Delhi’s Ashok Vihar, said that while their school has not received any bomb threat, the school has been closed down once for safety measures. “Kids are scared and we are scared. We are unable to think what the right step would be,” he said, adding that the schools immediately try to evacuate students from schools. “Things got so chaotic, anything bad could have happened.”
Gupta said that no guidelines are being created by school authorities or the government to ensure the safety of children. He said that children being exposed to bomb threats at a young age is concerning for parents. “The children know that every time there is a bomb threat, schools are closed. Now, they might pull a prank like this just to get a holiday,” he added.
School authorities should create guidelines to provide an environment to students, where the administration conducts mock drills and sessions to make the students aware that such pranks are dangerous and wrong, Gupta suggested. “A committee should be formed by the government to conduct inspections on whether schools have proper security systems or not.”
One of the biggest concerns among members of the Delhi Parents Association is the response of school authorities toward the hoax threats and the delay in action when the emails are received overnight. “You wait for children to come to school, then you turn on your screen at your own convenience, and then you decide,” remarked Gautam, the group’s president.
She said that the schools across Delhi lack a proper system to manage such a situation, even though the threats have now become a “routine matter”. If timely action is taken by sending emergency emails and text messages to parents, the attendance in school at the time can be reduced to 20 percent. “Dealing with just 20 percent of students, whose parents may happen to somehow miss the message, would be at least a lot easier.”
‘Fear of the unknown’
But according to school authorities, it is difficult for the administration and parents to act immediately in such an emergency situation.
Tania Joshi, principal of The Indian School—one of the private schools that received hoax bomb threats four times over the past few months—told ThePrint that now the situation has begun losing its seriousness. “We don’t want our kids to get used to it. The situation is such that we keep calling principals of other schools every day to find out which ones received threats.”
The fear, however, is of the unknown, she said. Dark web, a part of the internet that is completely encrypted and not visible to traditional search engines, is something that is making the situation chaotic, according to Joshi. She also said that every bomb threat that her school received came at a particular time. “We usually receive these emails around 9 in the morning, when the classes have already begun.”
This results in “pushing the fifth gear”, including evacuating the students, making them gather at the edge of the building and not sending them out randomly, she said. Her school has a strength of around 2,500 students in the morning session. “Our entire system is disrupted. To get back to school also becomes a hassle. There are parents who get really upset.”
Schools have become soft targets and there are no solutions to it, she added.
Jyoti Arora, principal of New Delhi’s Mount Abu School, told ThePrint that while the reaction of Delhi Police has always been very quick and they are always ready to evacuate students immediately, the process breaks the continuity of the day.
While Arora’s school has not received any threat so far, it has been taking safety measures when other schools face an emergency, resulting in many parents wanting to take their children back home immediately. “We don’t say no because their panic is valid,” she said. “All of this has been causing a gap in the learning system.”
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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