At least six district courts in West Bengal, including two in Kolkata, were evacuated and searched on Tuesday afternoon following a bomb scare triggered by emails, police said.
Sniffer dogs and bomb squad personnel were sent to the Civil Court, Sessions Court and Bankshal Court in central Kolkata following an email received by the court office alleging that bombs had been planted inside the building. The search yielded no results.
Similar incidents took place in Chinsurah court in Hooghly district, Asansol and Durgapur courts in West Burdwan district, and Berhampur court in Murshidabad district.
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All the incidents occurred simultaneously hours after the Supreme Court on Tuesday morning announced that judicial officials from Odisha and Jharkhand as well as 250 acting and retired judicial officers of Bengal district courts could be deployed to deal with about six million disputed claims filed by voters during the ongoing special intensive audit of the electoral register.
West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal said the state must provide safety and security to judicial officers deployed in the SIR exercise.
State Minister of State Nandini Chakraborty, Director General of Police Piyush Pandey and Kolkata Police Commissioner Supratim Sarkar held a press conference at Nabanna, the state secretariat, during the search operations.
“We are investigating the source of the emails. The pattern is the same. All the district magistrates are working in their respective districts. The state government is actively working to ensure their safety and security so that the SIR exercise is not affected,” the chief secretary said.
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“Our cybercrime wing is trying to trace the source of the email. We will take strong action once we identify the sender,” Supratim Sarkar said.
Debaprasad Nath, West Burdwan district judge, said in Durgapur court that he had ordered the administration to vacate the building as a security measure.
The judge told the media: “It is most likely a false mail. I have issued orders to evacuate the court as a security measure so that the search operation can be carried out quickly.”
The police were unable to find any explosive device in any of the five courts until two in the afternoon. However, security measures were beefed up in several other courts in light of the panic sparked by the events.
