Major search operation follows after 10 Rajkot hotels get fake bomb threats in a day

The Imperial Palace, Sayaji, The Sentosa, KK Beacon, Hotel Bhabha, Hotel Paramount Inn, Hotel Jyoti, The Elements, The Grand Regency and Seasons are the 10 hotels that received the threats in emails. Of these, while nine hotels are under the jurisdiction of Rajkot City Police, Seasons falls under the jurisdiction of Rajkot Rural Police.

All the hotels received the bomb threat in an email by a sender named “Kan Din” at 12:45 pm. The email read, “I placed bombs in every location of your hotel. The bombs will go off in a few hours. Many innocent lives will be lost today. Hurry up and evacuate the hotel. EVACUATE NOW (sic).”

As soon as the hotels received the threats, calls were made to police, which led to the deployment of a massive force of 120-150 personnel and officers of the police across these 10 locations.

An official involved in the sweeping operations told The Indian Express, “First, the local police stations immediately deployed teams to set up a protective perimeter around all 10 locations. Teams of the Crime Branch and Special Operations Group (SOG) were distributed across the hotels.”

The second step was to order evacuation of all guests and staff in the hotels. Meanwhile, investigators immediately picked up the registers of the hotels at the same time and began an analysis of guests and staff, cross-checking them against history-sheeters and those with suspect travel histories and IDs, said the official.

Once the hotels were evacuated, with all guests and staff accounted for, the BDDS and Dog Squad moved in to check each hotel. This was done at every hotel, one after another.

Speaking on the sweep of the hotels and the findings of the police Inspector SM Jadeja of the Rajkot City’s Special Operations Group told The Indian Express, “The bomb squad swept the entire hotels one by one, from basement to terrace, every room and piece of baggage accounted for. No explosive devices or materials were found at any of the nine hotels.”

The Indian Express also spoke to SP Jaypalsinh Rathod of Rural Rajkot, who said, “The Seasons was evacuated and thoroughly searched by the BDDS. No bomb was found at the premises. The guests were then allowed back into the hotel.”

The entire operation took four-and-a half hours, beginning at about 1 pm and ending by 5:30 pm.

The Rajkot City Police has primarily filed an application of a complaint in the matter at the DCB police station and the Crime Branch is investigating the case, said DCP (Crime & SOG) Parthrajsinh Gohil. The decision to file an FIR will be taken later, said the officer.

The incident comes amid preparations for the visit of PM Narendra Modi, along with his Spanish counterpart Pedro Sanchez, to inaugurate the transport aircraft assembly line of the factory set up in a joint venture of Tata Advanced Systems Limited (TASL) and aircraft major Airbus on Monday. The two leaders are also set to hold bilateral talks in the city.

However, in the backdrop of heightened security arrangements not just in Vadodara but across the state, due to the high-profile diplomatic visit as well as the festival of Diwali, the number of premises and transport that have received bomb threats have reached 14 within the span of a fortnight.

These include bomb threats to the 10 hotels in Rajkot on Saturday, a SpiceJet flight from Mumbai to Kandla on October 25 and a Star Airlines flight from Bengaluru to Jamnagar on October 19; as well as two bomb threats to Gujarat National Law University (GNLU) on October 12 and 13.