Bomb threat at Delhi college, declared hoax by police

Around 2,000 students and 70 staffers evacuated from Ram Lal Anand College in Delhi due to bomb threat via WhatsApp; police suspect hoax message.

Around 2,000 students and 70 staffers of Ram Lal Anand College in south Delhi were evacuated on Thursday morning after some teachers received a WhatsApp message warning of explosives, following which multiple units of the Delhi Police carried out prolonged searches of the Delhi University institute, officers aware of the matter said.

Ram Lal Anand College in south Delhi. (Sanchit Khanna/HT)

After an over two-hour search operation, the police concluded that it was likely a hoax message. Deputy commissioner of police (southwest) Rohit Meena said, “The entire college campus was checked but nothing was found. We are investigating who sent the message.”

College principal Rakesh Kumar Gupta said, “We evacuated the college and called the police. However, the police found nothing after scanning the campus for over two and a half hours.”

Giving details of the case, police said that around 9.34am the college staff received a WhatsApp message on his personal phone from an unknown person, who threatened to blow up the institution.

Rajiv Kumar, the staff association president at the college, said “One of the non-teaching staff received a text message from an unknown number. The text simply said that there is a bomb inside the college campus.”

Kumar said that around 2,000 students and 70 staffers were present inside the college at that time. “As soon as we got to know, we told the principal and evacuated the campus. We called the police as well. The police searched the campus for over two hours and nothing was found.”

DCP Meena said that as soon as they received a call, several police teams, along with bomb detection and bomb disposal squads, were rushed to the spot, but no explosive was found.

“A case has been registered against unknown persons. Police suspect the caller was from outside India or used a proxy browser,” the officer said.

The suspected hoax message comes around a month after Amity International School, Pushp Vihar in south Delhi received a hoax email warning of explosives. Last year too, several south Delhi schools reported similar incidents of hoax emails.

HT had earlier reported that a hoax email sent to The Indian School on April 12, 2023 had been traced by police to an IP address in Germany, though the sender remains unidentified.