Two colleges, eight schools receive bomb threats in TN's Tiruchi

Chennai, Oct 3 (IANS) Two colleges and eight schools in Tiruchi district of Tamil Nadu received bomb threats via phone call and email. Police are conducting inquiry into the threats and sniffer dogs and special bomb squads are pressed into action.

Tiruchi district police said that calls were received at St Joseph’s College, a reputed college with a legacy of 180 years. Holy Cross College (Autonomous) for women in Tiruchi also received a bomb threat.

Other than these two colleges, bomb threat was received in Campion Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School, Samadh Higher Secondary School, Montfort School, Acharya Shiksha Mandir School, Rajam Krishnamoorthy Public School, Amrita School and two more schools in rural Tiruchi. The schools received emails stating that a bomb would explode in the school soon. The Tiruchi district administration declared a holiday for all eight schools that received bomb threats.

Police are split into several teams and investigation is on. However, after preliminary inquiries, the police officials said that the threat seemed to be a hoax.

Police are investigating all corners of these educational institutions and have not dropped the probe even though the department suspects that it was a hoax call.

The email threat was identified as one from a lady named Swetha Balakrishnan but the police suspect that this is a fake email id.

The cyber cell of the Tamil Nadu police said that an investigation is on to find out about the sender and also to track the Internet Protocol address of the sender to ascertain their identity.

This is the third such threat received in Tamil Nadu schools in recent times. A bomb threat was issued to Indian Public School in Erode and its campuses at Salem, Tiruchi and Tirunelveli districts. Four schools in Madurai also received threats on September 30.

Tamil Nadu Police is conducting a detailed investigation across the state on the recurring fake bomb threats to schools in the state.

A few months ago, schools in Chennai -- in Gopalapuram and Anna Nagar -- received bomb threats in February 2024 but later found it to be a hoax.