Multiple hospitals in Delhi receive bomb threat emails

Several hospitals, including AIIMS and Safdarjung, and a mall in Delhi on Aug 20 received bomb threat emails, prompting authorities to launch searches on their premises, officials said.

A call was received at 1.04 pm from a hospital in Nangloi and another from Primus Hospital at 1.07 pm in central Delhi's Chanakya Puri informing that they had received bomb threats, a Delhi Fire Services (DFS) official said.

Fire tenders, bomb detection teams and police rushed to the spots. A thorough checking is being conducted, the official said.

The mailing list mentioned around 50 government and private hospitals, including AIIMS, Safdarjung, Apollo, Moolchand, Max and Sir Ganga Ram hospitals, police said.

"We have placed many explosives inside your building. They are placed in black backpacks. The bombs are set to go off in a few hours," the email, sent through Gmail at 12.04 pm, stated.

"You will end up in a pool of blood, none of you deserve to keep living. Everyone inside the building will lose their lives. I incessantly have nothing other than scam for humanity. Today will be your last day on earth," it said.

The email claimed that a "group named 'COURT' is behind this massacre".

"We won't stop causing terror. Give out group's name to News Outlets," it stated.

A police officer said the pattern of these threat emails matches with those sent earlier to hospitals, schools, universities and other government buildings, where the sender did not mention the dateline in the email.

Another police officer said that in the afternoon, a call was received regarding a similar bomb threat at central Delhi's Canakya Mall. The mall was also searched but nothing suspicious was recovered, the officer said.

Some of the hospitals have already been searched and nothing suspicious has been found yet, the officer said, adding that a thorough checking is underway in other hospital premises.

(PTI)