Bomb threat e-mail triggers security sweep at Punjab Secretariat in Chandigarh

CHANDIGARH: The Punjab Secretariat received a bomb threat e-mail on Thursday, triggering a massive security response and anti-sabotage checks at the high-security complex, officials said. Following the alert, police teams, fire brigade personnel, bomb disposal squads, dog squads and an ambulance were immediately deployed at the premises. Authorities conducted a thorough search of the building, but no explosives or suspicious objects were found, officials confirmed. Despite the threat being unsubstantiated, security has been tightened in and around the Secretariat as a precautionary measure. This is not the first such incident. Last month, the Secretariat had received a similar threat e-mail, which later turned out to be a hoax. The Punjab and Haryana Secretariat is located in Sector-1, Chandigarh, a designated high-security zone housing key government offices. The latest scare comes amid a series of recent threat e-mails reported from Chandigarh, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Patiala and several schools in Haryana. In each of those cases, the threats were later found to be hoaxes.