New Delhi: On the morning of 15 May, the Rajasthan Police brass went into a tizzy as the Chief Minister’s Office received a death threat through an email. The sender also threatened that a senior IAS officer would be chopped into pieces before being dumped in a suitcase fitted with a time bomb right inside Jaipur’s Sawai Mansingh Stadium.
“If required we will murder Bhajan Lal Sharma also and cut him into pieces and pack him black suitcase and keep in the centre of the stadium (sic),” reads the email whose contents are now part of an FIR.
The probe was heading nowhere until Sunday, when the Ahmedabad cyber crime branch arrested Rene Joshilda from Chennai for allegedly sending hoax threats to several public installations, including the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.
A senior consultant with Deloitte, Rene had sent out mails to implicate the man, a colleague, she wanted to marry, the Ahmedabad police said. She repeatedly sought to implicate her colleague in ‘a rape case’ in a Hyderabad hotel in many of the emails.
On 12 May, she had allegedly sent a threat mail to the principal of B.J.Medical College boasting about the role in the Air India crash, they added.
Rene had issued at least 21 hoax threats in the last two months, Joint Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad Crime branch, Sharad Singhal, said, adding that a majority of these threats were about blowing up the cricket stadium last month when it was frequently hosting Indian Premier League (IPL) matches.
“Last month, there were IPL matches, including the final which was attended by over 1 lakh people. None of those threat emails could be taken lightly until each and every one of them was verified. This had become a menace,” a senior Gujarat Police officer told ThePrint.
Ahmedabad Police Commissioner Gyanendra Singh Malik formed formed a high-level team comprising Deputy Commissioners of Police (DCP) Lavina Sinha and Ajit Rajian and Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Hardik Makadia to trace the sender of these emails.
Upon examining the emails received by Gujarat authorities, investigators focused on potential suspects who were involved in the entire chain of events. They stumbled upon a “partial” digital footprint which the techie had left behind around two years back while using an encrypted platform.
“She may not have been an expert (at that time) and hence, left a partial footprint behind. When the investigation and analysis matched with the identity of that three-year-old digital identity, it was traced to her in Chennai,” a police officer said.
Rene had allegedly created approximately 130,000 fake accounts, which may have been generated using more than 100 mobile numbers she acquired around three years ago, the investigators said.
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Early signs of trouble
Born to well-off working parents, Rene did her education in Chennai. After schooling, she pursued a Bachelor of Engineering in electrical and electronics from Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering. She did an internship with Kaizen Robotics before completing her engineering degree.
Her professional career started with Accenture as an application development associate in July 2017. She remained there until December 2021, earning timely promotions along the way. The techie enrolled in a postgraduate programme to upskill herself in artificial intelligence and machine learning through the Great Learning platform.
In January 2022, Rene joined Deloitte as a consultant and worked from home, investigators told ThePrint, adding that over time, she became interested in one of her colleagues who was working from Bengaluru.
The investigators said there were complaints about her troubling college friends through Instagram. “The matter was not pursued further as she had claimed that her account on Instagram was hacked,” an investigator said.
Though she knew to operate anonymously on the dark web, the activities allegedly intensified over the last six months. “The marriage of her colleague, whom she was interested in, earlier in February, was the final trigger, following which she unleashed her rage,” a police officer said.
Rene allegedly sent more than 30 threatening emails to security and government departments about explosions at public places or government installations.
Investigators said these threats were sent either from email accounts opened in the name of the Bengaluru colleague, or via email accounts opened with keywords such as ‘Pakistan’ to terrorise the receivers as much as possible.
The threats, according to the Ahmedabad Police, were made during Operation Sindoor to maximise their psychological impact.
On the morning of 12 May, Rene allegedly sent an email alerting authorities about a bomb blast at the Narendra Modi stadium. In the same month, she also threatened to blow up at least two upscale schools in Mumbai as well as the stadium and district courts in Jaipur. Threats were received by a hospital and the Holkar stadium in Indore.
DCP Sinha stated that the techie issued 13 threats to the Narendra Modi Stadium, with 10 of them originating from email accounts with Pakistan in username and the remaining three with the Bengaluru colleague’s name.
“Apart from this, in other 11 states like Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala, Bihar, Telangana, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, etc., the accused also sent emails threatening to blow up bombs at different places,” the DCP said in a statement.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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