Punjab Police have achieved a major breakthrough in uncovering a network involved in circulating threatening bomb hoax emails to schools and other sensitive locations across the country. Individuals based in Bangladesh and Pakistan were allegedly part of the network. Amritsar Police Commissioner Gurpreet Singh Bhullar said the main accused, Sourav Biswas alias Michael, who had crossed over from Bangladesh, has been arrested from West Bengal.

He said the case has international linkages and assistance from Interpol has also been sought. Investigations by the Anti Cyber Crime team revealed that the accused was involved in buying and selling email accounts through various Facebook groups. Police said around 300 Gmail accounts were procured, out of which 219 were sold to a Bangladesh-based individual. These accounts were later supplied to unidentified Pakistan-based persons, who allegedly used them to send bomb threat emails and carry out other illegal cyber activities. Police have recovered several CPUs, computer hard disks, mobile phones, details of over 300 Gmail IDs along with passwords, and 15 Hotmail accounts during the investigation.