Two arrested as Gujarat police bust inter-state bomb threat network

Two people were arrested in Bihar and Jharkhand in connection with an inter-state network involved in sending bomb threat emails, police said on Tuesday.

As many as 5,13,847 email IDs and passwords were found on the devices of one of the accused, a senior police official said.

The investigation commenced after the Gujarat Secretariat received a bomb threat email on September 10.

Technical analysis of the email communication and other digital trails led the Gujarat Police Cyber Centre of Excellence (CCoE) to Bhagalpur in Bihar and Deoghar in Jharkhand, said Gujarat Police (CCoE) officials.

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The accused were identified as Roushan Kumar of Bhagalpur and Gulshan Kumar Singh of Deoghar. A device used by Kumar to operate the bomb-threat email account was seized and contained 7,215 email IDs and their corresponding passwords, according to police officials.

Officials investigating the matter have found that Singh was supplying lists of email IDs and passwords to people in different parts of the country for use in sending threat emails, police said.

“A total of 5,13,847 email IDs and passwords were found on Singh’s devices. The list included the email ID used to send the threat to the Gujarat Secretariat,” said Vivek Bheda, SP, CCoE, Gandhinagar.

“We are going to write to them about whatever loopholes we have found and ask them (Google) to plug them at the earliest so that further propagation can be prevented. We are going to do this through the home ministry. A notice will be sent to them,” Bheda said.