In a first, Bengaluru police track down sender of hoax bomb threats

Bengaluru: For the first time, the Bengaluru police have cracked a case pertaining to hoax bomb threats. 

On Thursday, the police detained Deepanjan Mitra, 48, from West Bengal’s Darjeeling, for sending emails about bombs being planted in three engineering colleges in Bengaluru — BMS Institute of Technology, Bangalore Institute of Technology, and MSR Institute of Technology — on October 4. The threats were declared a hoax after a search operation. 

Police investigations had revealed that the sender used Virtual Private Network (VPN) to conceal his IP address. 

But "excellent technical investigations" by the Bengaluru South Division police led to the breakthrough, city top cop B Dayananda said on Friday. 

A local court in West Bengal has rejected the police's application to bring Mitra to Bengaluru on a transit warrant. The police have now issued a notice to Mitra, summoning him to Bengaluru for questioning, Dayananda added. 

A senior police officer told DH that Mitra, a BCom graduate, worked at a corporate company until 2012. But in the last 12 years, he sold ancestral properties to make ends meet and enrolled on online courses related to technology and software. 

'Just for fun'

Mitra, police say, was sending the hoax emails "just for fun". He has been named in at least 10 cases in Kolkata, Gujarat and other parts of the country, he explained. 

"He confessed to sending the emails using VPN. We have seized his laptop and mobile phone," the officer said. 

A small glitch in the VPN exposed Mitra's IP address. Later, “pure technical” analysis helped the police trace him to West Bengal, the officer added. 

Meanwhile, the hoax emails about bombs being planted in over 50 schools in Bengaluru last year remain untraced. Many schools, colleges, hotels and hospitals in the city later received similar emails. Police are investigating if Mitra was behind any of these emails, too.