Around 4,000 students of Delhi Public School (DPS), Mathura Road were evacuated on Wednesday morning after the institute received an email warning of explosives, following which multiple units of the Delhi Police carried out prolonged searches of the premises, officers aware of the matter said.
After a five-hour search operation, the police concluded that it was likely a hoax email. “No bomb or any suspicious object was found,” said Rajesh Deo, deputy commissioner of police (south-east).
School principal Reema Sharma did not respond to phone calls or text messages seeking her comment on the incident.
This is the second time in a fortnight that a Delhi school has received a hoax email about explosives, with The Indian School in Sadiq Nagar receiving a similar email on April 12. That time too, the police had concluded that the email was a hoax after a five-hour search operation. The Indian School had received a bomb hoax email in November 2022 as well.
In the DPS case, the school received the hoax email on its official email address on Tuesday evening, but the administration noticed it only on Wednesday morning, DCP Deo said.
“At 7.50am, the school principal called the station house officer of the Nizamuddin police station to complain about the receipt of the mail on the school’s official email. The email threatened that the bomb would be triggered at 9am on Wednesday,” said the DCP.
By the time that the school noticed the email, around 4,000 students had already arrived. They were immediately asked to move from their classrooms to the school playground. A class 6 student said, “We waited in the playground while teachers began calling our parents to take us home.”
DCP Deo said the evacuation of students began without any delay. “Students from different wings were facilitated to assemble in the open grounds near their buildings,” he said.
Police teams, the bomb detection squad, the bomb disposal squad, a sniffer dog squad, the special cell, a SWAT team, a Delhi Disaster Management Authority team, CATS ambulances, the fire department and the sub-divisional magistrate also arrived at the spot to help with the search operations.
Some parents got to know of the situation from the news, while others were informed by the school authorities either over the phone or through text messages. The road outside the school gates was flooded with anxious parents, looking to take their children back.
“The school WhatsApp groups were flooded with messages from teachers asking us not to panic,” said Rajeev, the father of a student who declined to share his surname.
Papiya Basak, whose son studies in class 7, said she learnt about the situation from a cab driver who ferries her ward to and from the school. “The driver told me that the school wasn’t sending the children in cabs or school buses. They would be allowed only to return with their parents,” she said, adding that she could only pick up her son after the search operations ended as she was at work.
Her son said, “Those students whose parents did not immediately come to school to pick up their children were made to wait in a large hall that was declared free of explosives till the search operations ended.”
The search operations eventually ended around 12.30pm, with police declaring it a hoax.
Officers said they are trying to trace the sender of the email. “The server from which the email was sent is based in the United States. We are trying to track down the sender,” said Deo.
HT had earlier reported that the April 12 hoax email sent to The Indian School had been traced by police to an IP address in Germany, though in that case too, the sender remains unidentified.