The iconic Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) building in south Mumbai received a bomb threat email, which turned out to a hoax after a search of the premises, police said on Tuesday.
A BSE employee received an email on Sunday from an email ID mentioning the name of a political leader from south India, an official said. The person, identified himself as “Comrade Pinari Vijayan.”
The email claimed four RDX IEDs had been planted in the BSE building and warned of a blast around 3 pm on Monday, he said.
The BSE employee alerted the stock exchange authorities who then approached the Mumbai Police.
A team of the Mumbai Police and the Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad (BDDS) rushed to the BSE highrise tower and conducted a search, the official said, adding that nothing suspicious was found.
The police have registered a case against unidentified person under relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and efforts were on to trace the email sender.
During the 1993 serial bomb blasts, the BSE building was one of the targets.
An official said the crime branch is now trying to trace the IP address from which the email had been sent in order to track down the sender of the email.
The officer added that there have been an increasing number of hoax threat emails and calls in recent years. As per the data with the police, the majority of these are either made by people with mental health conditions, those wanting to frame someone else, or people who are under the influence of alcohol.
“In some cases, people also do it to see if they can get away with it by using proxy IDs which makes it difficult to trace them,” the officer said.