Chandigarh, Jan 29 The high-security Punjab and Haryana Civil Secretariat, guarded by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), was evacuated on Thursday after a bomb threat email was received in the office of the National Informatics Centre (NIC), officials said.
Besides the CISF, Chandigarh Police, along with its counterparts from Punjab and Haryana, bomb squads and the Fire Brigade, were deployed in the Secretariat, which houses offices of the Chief Ministers of both states, their Cabinet colleagues and top-ranking government functionaries.
After the threat sent from an email id in the name of 'Michael Gill', the entire Secretariat was evacuated and thoroughly searched.
The CISF has been deployed in the Secretariat since 1995, when then Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh was killed in a bomb blast at the complex in Chandigarh, the city that serves as the joint administrative capital of Punjab and Haryana.
A day earlier, around 30 schools in the city received bomb-threat emails, causing widespread panic among the police and local administration.
As the schools, both public and private, received the email in the morning, the police were informed, and an alert was issued from the police control room within minutes.
Upon receiving the information, the bomb detection team, the operations cell, and the local police station personnel reached the schools and began searching all premises.
The threatening emails contained inflammatory and objectionable content, including the phrase "bomb blast 1.11 p.m." The email stated: "Chandigarh is Khalistan, stop the national anthem in schools…" It also mentions the Prime Minister’s proposed visit to Dera Ballan in Punjab’s Jalandhar on February 1 to pay his respects on Guru Ravidas Jayanti.
Normalcy returned as schools remained closed for the day and parents took their children back home.
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