Prank email proves costly for teenager

Mateen Hafeez I TNN
Mumbai: A 16-year-old college student from Gujarat has been arrested and brought to the city for sending an email to a private news channel, threatening to blow up local trains at Andheri railway station.

The teenager, Sunnay Patel, son of a clerk in Ahmedabad, was picked up on Friday from his residence and brought to Mumbai. Patel posed as a member of the Dawood gang and sent an email to the news channel.

His mail read: “There will be blasts in local trains near Andheri railway station. Prevent it, if you can.’’ The mail was sent by a username dgang4blast@yahoo.com.

The only son of his parents Patel a class XI (Science faculty) student, has been sent to the Dongri remand home and will be produced before a juvenile court on Monday.

The teenager said that he had wanted to play a prank on the investigating agencies. The news channel forwarded the email to the cyber crime investigative cell (CCIC) and the Mumbai anti-terrorism squad (ATS). Investigators discovered that the Internet Protocol (IP) address was from Ahmedabad and BSNL was the Internet Service Provider.

Even though the Gujarat anti-terrorism squad was also informed of the details, they unable to nab him.

“We had informed the Gujarat anti-terrorism squad at a time when the user was online and he could have been caught red-handed. However, the Gujarat police reached the spot too late and by that time a Mumbai police team had already left for Ahmedabad. Patel was caught from his residence,’’ said an officer.

WEB CRIME
In September 2006, the ATS had picked up an 18-year-old boy, Sharique Khan, for sending an email to a news channel. The mail written on behalf of a terror outfit, Lashkar-e-Qahar, claimed the responsibility for the serial train blasts in Mumbai on July 11, 2006. Sharique, a college student in Bhopal, had told the investigators that he was very excited and wanted to see the impact of his email on news channels, which ran the story for several days

In another case, Kolkata resident Dinesh Prasad Gupta had in October, 2007 sent an email to the BSE and NSE, threatening to blow up the two installations. He had sent the email to NSE assistant vice-president Sup rabhat Lala. Gupta, who posed as Pakistan’s secret service agency ISI’s agent Abdul Rashman, had written in the mail: “This is to inform you that, within 48 hours of receiving this email, the NSE and BSE buildings will be blown up—From Abdul Rashman, ISI agent.’’ Gupta later told the police that he had suffered a loss in the share market and that is why he had sent a threatening mail.