KOLKATA: Tension gripped West Bengal’s judicial corridors on Tuesday afternoon when at least six district courts, including two in Kolkata, received hoax bomb threat emails, forcing evacuations and disrupting proceedings just hours after the Supreme Court directed judicial officers to oversee the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Sniffer dogs and bomb disposal squads swept the City Civil and Sessions Court and Bankshall Court in central Kolkata following an email claiming explosives had been planted inside. Similar threats hit Chinsurah Court in Hooghly, Asansol and Durgapur courts in West Bardhaman, and Berhampore Court in Murshidabad, with all incidents unfolding simultaneously around noon. No explosives were found after thorough searches, allowing courts to resume operations by evening, but security was ramped up statewide amid lingering panic. The timing raised eyebrows, coming right after the Supreme Court ordered deployment of around 250 acting and retired Bengal judicial officers—potentially supplemented by those from Odisha and Jharkhand—to clear nearly six million voter discrepancies in the SIR exercise. Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal stressed the State’s duty to protect these officers, telling reporters: “The State must provide safety and security for the judicial officers deployed for the SIR exercise.”
At Nabanna, the State secretariat, Chief Secretary Nandini Chakraborty, DGP Peeyush Pandey, and Kolkata Police Commissioner Supratim Sarkar addressed a hurried press conference as searches continued. “We are investigating the source of the mails. The pattern is the same. All the district judges are working in their respective areas. The State Government is working actively to ensure their safety and security so that the SIR exercise is not affected,” Chakraborty asserted.
Commissioner Sarkar added: “Our cybercrime wing is trying to trace the source of the e-mail. We will take strong action once the sender is identified.” West Bardhaman District Judge Debaprasad Nath, at Durgapur Court, dismissed the threat as likely a hoax. “It is most likely a hoax mail. I gave orders to vacate the court as a safety measure so that the search operation could be conducted quickly.”
Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal refrained from speculating on links to SIR but urged police action: “I think the police are already probing the bomb threats, and whether they are linked to any ongoing election-related exercise in the courts.” Chakraborty vowed a thorough probe into whether an individual or group was behind the identical emails, possibly from encrypted servers masking IP addresses.
While judicial work resumed, the coordinated hoax has State agencies on high alert, probing motives amid the high-stakes electoral cleanup.