‘City airport bomb threats link to WB SIM, Bihar caller’

Ranchi: Two bomb threat calls on consecutive days at Ranchi’s Birsa Munda international airport, resulted in a multi-state probe after investigation revealed the hoax call, threatening to blow up the airport was made from Bihar, using a SIM registered in the name of a woman in West Bengal’s Nadia district.
“The call originated from Biharsharif in Bihar and the address registered against the number used to call and send a text message to the airport staff belongs to one Rasmani Devi, a resident of Nadia district in West Bengal,” said a senior police officer.
The first call came on Thursday, when the caller said that his belongings are stuck at the airport and he would explode the premises with a bomb, leading to a huge security scare.
A day later, intelligence sources said a text was received from the same number on Friday.
“The airport staff received a text around 7:45 am in the morning and a demand of Rs 30 Lakh was made from the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and the man said he would send his account number by 3 pm. However, no account number was received by any AAI official,” said the source.
A police team led by SP (city) Anshuman Kumar has started an investigation into the case.
“The caller is using a spoofing technique in which a cybercriminal disguises his identity as someone else and make calls, sends text, among others,” Kumar said.
Kumar said they have traced the locations and police teams have been sent for further investigation.
Flight operations remained normal on Friday as passengers didn’t face any inconvenience with 28 flights operating in and out of the airport on Friday.
Airport director K L Agarwal said they received a text threat on the cell phone of the terminal manager on Friday morning.
“It is the same number on which a call was received on Thursday afternoon of a bomb being planted which had turned out to be a hoax,” he said.
Not leaving anything to chance, a multilateral security check was conducted on airport premises, which included personnel from Central Industrial Security Forces (CISF), members from intelligence bureau, local police as well as airline staff.
“The security check lasted for more than 90 minutes, and we inspected the whole perimeter as per our set protocols,” added Agarwal.