District and sessions courts across Maharashtra were evacuated on Monday after emails threatening bomb blasts on court premises triggered a statewide security scare, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported. Courts in Thane, Pune, Hingoli and Beed all received the threat messages, and police searches were launched at each complex.

Source: PTI

In Thane, the court building was evacuated in the afternoon after the email warned of an explosion at 3.30 pm. Personnel from Thane Nagar police station led judges, advocates and staff out of the complex, and a dog squad and Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad (BDDS) personnel then carried out a thorough search, PTI reported. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone 1) Balasaheb Patil said the two buildings housing the Thane district court were evacuated and checked. In Pune, the Shivajinagar district and sessions court premises were evacuated and a search was under way late into the evening.

The wider wave of messages reached courts in Mumbai — where the Mazgaon, Dindoshi and Esplanade courts were named — as well as Palghar, Nagpur, Nanded, Satara and Parbhani, according to reporting in The Times of India summarised on Tuesday. Police sources in Palghar said the emails were sent to courts across the state from the same email address, arriving at intervals of about 30 minutes.

Source: The Times of India via Urban Acres

What the emails claimed — and what police found

The emails allegedly also warned of attacks on metro stations on “9.11” and referred to an alleged plan targeting singer Diljit Dosanjh's November 27 concert at Mumbai's Mahalaxmi Racecourse. These were claims made inside the threat emails; police have not established that they represented a credible operational threat. After searches at multiple court complexes, police said no suspicious object or material was found.

In Beed, in the Marathwada region, a similar email was received at 11.52 am warning of a blast at 3.11 pm, after which the court complex was evacuated. Additional Superintendent of Police Shaikh Sameer said police, BDDS and local crime branch personnel, along with a dog squad, carried out a sanitisation and search operation, and cyber teams were verifying the origin of the IP address, PTI reported. In Hingoli, a police official said the email might be a hoax, and the district cybercrime unit has launched a probe to trace its source.

Mumbai Police said they were in the process of registering a first information report against the unidentified sender or senders. Monday's messages followed a similar email received by the office of Mumbai mayor Ritu Tawde on October 23. What happens next depends on the cyber investigation: police must trace who sent the emails before anyone can be arrested or charged.