Bengaluru police finds ‘love’ angle behind hoax bomb threats to schools in several cities
Rene Joshilda, a Bengaluru software engineer, has been booked for duping identity to send several hoax bomb threat emails across multiple cities.
Bengaluru Police have taken custody of Rene Joshilda, the woman behind fake bomb threats to schools spanning several states.
Joshilda, an MNC employee, was arrested in June from Chennai for sending threat bomb threat emails, according to PTI. She was brought to in Bengaluru on a body warrant following her arrest.
She has been booked for duping identity to send several hoax bomb threat emails across multiple cities, including Chennai, Hyderabad, and Gujarat, according to a report in News18.
Joshila reportedly used a virtual private network (VPN) to send the threat emails, hiding her real location and identity. She obtained virtual mobile numbers using an application called ‘gate code’ to register multiple accounts and used multiple forged WhatsApp accounts for her activities.
According to a report by India Today, police found her role in threat cases in Bengaluru's Kalasi Palya area.
Unrequited love
The 30-year-old Rene Joshilda used to work as a software engineer at an MNC.
According to the India Today report that quoted police officials, she developed feelings for her fellow co-worker, who reportedly did not reciprocate her feelings and later got married to someone else.
Disappointed by the rejection, Joshilda sent the threat emails using her colleague's identity and online credentials to frame him. Joshilda previously worked at a tech firm in Bengaluru before leaving the city.
Multiple threats spanning several states
According to the investigation led by Bengaluru police, Joshilda, who has been taken on a body warrant and brought to Bengaluru, had sent similar threats to multiple schools and public venues in several cities, including Chennai, Hyderabad, and Gujarat.
Earlier in June, Joshilda was arrested from Chennai for sending threat bomb threat emails to Gujarat high court, reported news agency PTI.
“The sender warned that three IEDs were placed in the high court premises. Local police, along with bomb detection and disposal squad (BDDS), reached the court premises on SG Highway and started the search operation without disturbing the court proceedings,” said inspector of Sola police station of Ahmedabad, KN Bhukan on June 24, adding that nothing suspicious had been found.
A similar threat email was sent to the official email ID of the district and sessions Court in Rajkot, said Jagdish Bangarva, deputy commissioner of police (DCP), Zone 2.
She sent hoax mails to multiple schools and even the Narendra Modi stadium in Gujarat's Ahmedabad.
In her threatening emails, she reportedly warned that she would “blow up your schools like the Gujarat plane crash,” escalating the seriousness of the threats.
