Around 11 schools of Jalandhar on Monday received bomb threat email. As a result, school administration messaged parents of students and asked them pick their children. Police officials, anti-sabotage teams also reached to schools premises and carried out searches in the schools. Schools of Jalandhar received threatening email around 9:10 am in the morning on Monday.
Jalandhar Police Commissioner Dhanpreet Kaur in her press briefing assured the citizens that there is no need to panic and nothing suspicious have been found yet. CP Kaur further stated that multiple teams of Police as well as Cyber Police are now trying to trace the origin of the sender.
Threat to schools of Jalandhar came just days after 15 schools of Amritsar received similar threats on December 12. As a result, anti-sabotage teams carried out searches and nothing suspicious was found. Finally, Amritsar CP Gurpreet Singh Bhullar stated that threat email to schools in Amritsar has been found fake. He also stated that local agencies, Punjab Cyber Cell and Central Agencies will now track the sender of the mail.
Punjab has gone through almost two decades of militancy period- 1980 to 1996. Sardar Iqbal Singh Lalpura is an expert on militancy with FBI. He also served as SSP in many districts and also handled intelligence during Operation Black Thunder and Operation Bluestar. Currently, Lalpura is in BJP's Parliamentary Board and also the Chairman of National Minority Commission.
Talking to True Scoop, he informed that that Punjab witnessed nearly two decades of terrorism, yet no Khalistan-linked terror outfit ever issued threats to blow up schools. "Even during the worst phase of terrorism, schools were never targeted. Colleges and other institutions did witness some incidents, but children were not chosen as targets,” he said.
He further said that during the militancy period, threats were usually sent through letters, as email communication did not exist at that time. "Today, we are seeing emails being sent to schools, which is a completely new and disturbing development. This matter requires a thorough investigation,” he said.
Lalpura, warned about the growing threat of narco-terrorism in Punjab. He said that a dangerous nexus between terrorists, gangsters, and drug smugglers has been operating in the state for some time. "This nexus is behind several recent incidents, including grenade attacks and attempted terror strikes,” he said.
Lalpura further pointed out that the existence of such a nexus came to light clearly after the Nabha Jailbreak, adding that this trend poses a serious threat to Punjab’s security. “Threats to cities like Amritsar and Jalandhar must be taken seriously by both state and central agencies,” he said.
The infamous Nabha Jail break took place in 2016.
A former Director General of Police (DGP), while speaking on the issue, said that during the period of Khalistan-related terrorism in Punjab from 1980 to 1996, terror outfits did not target women or children. He noted that while there were incidents in which children of police personnel were killed, schools or children were not directly targeted by terrorist organisations.
He further explained that during those years, there was no email communication and threats were usually sent through letters. However, he said that it is now being seen that schools are being targeted through emails, which marks a significant and worrying shift in the pattern of threats.
On the other hands, some experts believe that these mails that have been received by schools in Punjab may be fake and planted to create panic.
