Orissa: Crime branch to probe e-mail threat

Bhubaneswar, Aug 22: An e-mail message to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik threatening to blow up the state Assembly has prompted the Director General of Police to order for a Crime Branch inquiry to ascertain the veracity of the threat.

DGP Amarananda Pattnaik though dubbed the e-mail as''prank mail,'' has ordered the cyber cell of the crime branch to investigate the matter after it was traced that the sender is one Gagan Pattnaik who has used a Cyber cafe in Bangalore to send the threat call.

The Chief Minister office received the e-mail written in Hindi on Monday night stating that all preparations had been made to blow up the state Assembly building within a fortnight.

The e-mail further mentioned that the materials for blowing up the Assembly building had already arrived and claimed that majority of the people guarding the Assembly were ''our people''.

For last two days, the state police made frantic searches in and around the Assembly and pressed the anti-sabotage team and sniffer dogs to search every inch of the building, but failed to get anything and then came out with a statement that the Assembly was safe and all precautionary measures had been initiated to foil any such threat.

This was not the first time that the Assembly has received threat from unknown person through e-mail. Earlier, in November 2006 also both the Chief Minister office and the Assembly secretariat had received e-mail messages that a plan had been chalked out by a group of professional software engineers to blow up the Assembly and the Chief Minister's office.

The Cyber cell of the crime branch then traced the e-mail sender and found that one Kalpataru Das from Bangalore had sent the e-mail.

The Crime Branch did not gather more information about the incident and closed the matter stating that it was a ''prank mail''.

UNI