About 50 schools evacuated in India's capital after second bomb threat this year

New Delhi police launch investigation after email claims 'many people will be injured when the bombs detonate'

Children playing on a campus in New Delhi, where schools have been forced to close after a bomb threat. AFP

More than 40 schools in New Delhi were evacuated on Monday after receiving bomb threats, triggering panic among parents and pupils, and a widespread search operation. It was the second such incident this year.

Emails sent on Sunday claimed bombs had been placed in schools in India's capital. The Delhi Fire Department received its first call from leading city school GD Goenka at 6.15am, followed by similar calls from four dozen other schools, even as parents were dropping off their children. The police promptly evacuated the campuses.

"The bombs are small and hidden very well," the email read. "It will not cause very much damage to the building but many people will be injured when the bombs detonate. You all deserve to suffer and lose limbs," the sender wrote, demanding $30,000 to defuse the explosives.

Pupils were sent home, while city police and bomb squads, detection dogs and fire services, conducted a search. Although nothing suspicious was found, police have launched an investigation to trace the internet protocol address of the sender.

The threat comes after more than 100 schools in New Delhi and its satellite cities received a similar threat on May 1 and were evacuated. Those threats turned out to be a hoax. In October, at least 100 flights, including international routes to the US and the Middle East, were either grounded, diverted or cancelled after Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi received a series of hoax bomb threats.

Atishi, New Delhi’s chief minister who uses a single name, blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party for what she called a failure of government. Law and order in the city is managed by the ruling BJP, with police and other security agencies reporting to India’s Home Minister Amit Shah.

"The law-and-order situation in Delhi has never been so bad before,” Atishi said. "The BJP-ruled central government has failed in its only task of providing security to the people of Delhi."