Bomb threat to BSE from ‘Comrade Pinari Vijayan’ turns out hoax

A team of the Mumbai Police and its Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad (BDDS) rushed to the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) highrise tower in South Mumbai and conducted a search of the premises after a BSE employee received a threat to bomb the BSE building through an email supposedly sent on Sunday by a certain Comrade ‘Pinari’ Vijayan, the police said.

After thorough search, the team found no ‘RDX bomb’ in the complex as mentioned in the threat mail proving it to be a hoax. Though the email caused anxiety among the inmates of the building, it didn’t affect BSE’s work a wee bit as regular operations continued without a hitch, a police official said.

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The MRA Marg police station has registered a first information report (FIR) against unidentified persons under Section 351 (1), Section 353(2), Section 351(3) and Section 351(4) of relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. Efforts are on to trace the Internet Protocol address from which the email threat was sent in order to track down the sender of the hoax threat, a police official said.

According to a police official, the threat email mentioned that four RDX Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) had been placed at BSE’s Phiroze towers which would go off at 3 pm. On closer examination, it was found that the email was misspelt as Comrade ‘Pinari’ Vijayan as if it was an attempt to frame Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, the police official said.

A BSE employee saw the email only late Monday evening and alerted the police after which the BSE premises were thoroughly scanned.

“It being a Sunday there was no one inside the building. An employee saw the email only on Monday and alerted the police, who carried out a thorough search operation following due procedure. However, nothing suspicious was found inside the building,” a police official said.

The police official said there has been a spike in hoax threat emails and calls in recent years.

Majority of such hoax threats are either made by people with mental health conditions to attract attention, or those wanting to frame somebody, or those under the influence of drugs or alcohol, he said, adding, “In some cases, people also indulge in it to see if they can get away with it by using proxy IDs that make it difficult to trace them.”