Hoax bomb threat disrupts passport office for over 2 hrs

NT Reporter

Panaji

A bomb threat at the Passport Bhavan building at Patto, Panaji, on Monday morning turned out to be a hoax after security agencies found nothing suspicious during a thorough check of the premises. Work at the Regional Passport Office was disrupted for
over two hours.

People who had arrived by appointment for new passports or renewals were asked to vacate the building along with the passport office staff. Panaji police, Panaji Fire Brigade personnel, the bomb squad and Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) personnel were at the site.

“Nothing (suspicious) was found. We conducted a thorough check of the building. It was a hoax,” said Bomb Squad
PI Paresh Navelkar.

An employee at the Regional Passport Office told mediapersons that an email had been received on the official email ID. “The sender claimed that there will be a blast in the building and asked us to evacuate by around 11 am. They had mentioned in the email the Tamil LTTE group. We immediately informed the police. They fully checked the building and nothing was found. The passport operations will continue,” the employee said.

Police said that an investigation is underway to track the sender of the bomb threat mail.

From March to May last year, six different bomb threats were received in Goa, all of which eventually turned out to be hoaxes. These included threats at IHM Porvorim, the Director General of Police headquarters in Panaji, the High Court of Bombay at Goa in Porvorim, the Deputy Collector’s office in Mapusa, the bus stand in Canacona, and the Collectorate
building in Panaji.

Police investigations into those bomb threat emails had revealed that unknown accused persons had used a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to send emails to different authorities in Goa, including the office of the DGP. A VPN is a technology that creates a secure, encrypted connection between a device and a remote server, effectively hiding online activity
and IP address.