From Bhagalpur, a bomb threat to BRICS partners and PMO, claim Gujarat cops

A little before 10 am last Thursday (September 10), an email sent from a strange address landed in an official Gujarat government inbox. The email contained a specific threat – of bomb attacks against the Gujarat Vidhan Sabha, the offices of the Prime Minister and Union Home Minister in New Delhi, and in countries participating in the BRICS Summit.

The threat relating to the BRICS Summit was especially serious – the Presidents of China, Russia, and Iran would be in the capital, besides high dignitaries from the member countries of the 11-nation bloc. President Vladimir Putin was scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday, ahead of the September 12-13 summit.

The police swung into action, and tracked down the location from where the email had allegedly been sent – Bhagalpur, a city on the Ganga in northeastern Bihar, more than 1,900 km from Ahmedabad. There, they picked up two suspects, one of whom belongs to Bihar, and the other to Jharkhand.

The suspects, police said in Ahmedabad on Monday, allegedly received funds from unknown persons in Bangladesh to send the email threat. “At 9.47 am on September 10, the Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs Department of the Gujarat government received an email from the email ID ‘jondmorgan52627@gmail.com’ that threatened to cause explosions at the Gujarat Vidhan Sabha, offices of the Prime Minister and Home Minister of India, as well in the countries participating in the BRICS summit,” the Cyber Centre of Excellence (CCoE) of the Gujarat Police said.

The digital trail of the email led the CCoE to Bhagalpur, and a team of officers were sent to Bihar. With the help of local police, they apprehended a man whom the CCoE identified as Roshan Kumar Rajendra Kumar Bhumihar.

“Upon interrogation of the accused, it came to light that he had been provided with this email ID by one Gulshan Kumar Kaushal Singh, resident of Deoghar, Jharkhand. Subsequently, he too was placed under arrest, with help from the Jharkhand Police,” the CCoE said on Monday.

According to police, intensive interrogation of the accused led to the recovery of a list containing 5,13,847 email IDs, along with their corresponding passwords. The email IDs had been created for the purpose of sending threatening emails to government offices, schools, colleges, and courts, and for cybercrimes and other illegal activities, the CCoE alleged.

While the CCoE alleged that the accused men received funds from co-conspirators based in Bangladesh, they were unable to say exactly how much money had been transferred to them from abroad. The police claimed that the payment was done in cryptocurrency, and that they had found evidence of these payments in messages.

Investigators were now going through the email IDs to check whether any of them had been used to send other threats, and whether they were linked to any other cases, police said. Brendan Dabhi works with The Indian Express, focusing his comprehensive reporting primarily on Gujarat.

He covers the region's most critical social, legal, and administrative sectors, notably specializing at the intersection of health, social justice, and disasters. Expertise Health and Public Policy: He has deep expertise in healthcare issues, including rare diseases, Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), the complex logistics of organ transplants, and public health challenges like drug-resistant TB and heat health surveillance.

His on-ground reporting during the COVID-19 pandemic and Mucormycosis was critical in exposing healthcare challenges faced by marginalized communities in Gujarat. Social Justice and Legal Administration: He reports on the functioning of the legal and police system, including the impact of judicial philosophy, forensics and crucial administrative reforms (.

He covers major surveillance and crackdown exercises by the Gujarat police and security on the international border. Disaster and Crisis Management: His work closely tracks how government and civic bodies respond to large-scale crises, providing essential coverage on the human and administrative fallout of disasters including cyclones, floods, conflict, major fires and reported extensively on the AI 171 crash in Ahmedabad.

Civic Infrastructure and Governance: Provides timely reports on critical civic failures, including large scale infrastructure projects by the railways and civic bodies, as well as the enforcement of municipal regulations and their impact on residents and heritage.

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