Now email threat to CM, DCM demanding $2.5 mn

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: A couple of days after the blasts at the Rameshwaram Café in Whitefield of the city, Karnataka Chief Minister, including some Very Important Persons (VIPs) received threat mails demanding a ransom of 2.5 million dollars.

According to the police, at least 10 persons were injured in the Café after an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) was used in the blast.

According to the sources, the offices of the Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, Home Minister G Parameshwara and the Bengaluru Police Commissioner B Dayananda, received the mail on March 2, but the matter came to light on Tuesday after a case was registered at the Cyber Crime Police Station in Bengaluru.

The mails to the authorities are said to have contained threats to cause large explosions at public places across the state if they fail to pay the ransom.

Police sources said that the email had been sent using an ID 'Shahidkhan10786@protonmail. com' and had contained two alerts in it. The first alert read, "What are your thoughts on the movie trailer? If you don’t provide us with 2.5 million dollars, we will cause large explosions on buses, trains, temples, hotels, and public areas throughout Karnataka."

"We want to show you one more trailer. We are going to explode the next one in the Ambari Utsav bus. After the Ambari Utsav bus blast, we will raise our demands on social media. And will upload the screenshots of the mail sent to you on social media. We will tweet information about the next explosion," the text in the second alert read.

The Central Crime Branch (CCB) is currently probing the case, the police said.

Police experiencing lack of optimism

It may be recalled here that several prestigious educational institutions in Bengaluru had received threat mails a couple of months back and searches at the institutions turned out to be a hoax.

The investigation launched by the police to identify the senders, seemed to have hit a roadblock after they faced multiple hurdles.

After the CCB investigation failed to get any leads on the suspects involved in the Rameshwaram Café blast, a further probe was handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) recently.

Proton VPN service claims no records of users

Proton Virtual Private Network (VPN) is notorious for its stress on privacy. They have a no-logs policy, which essentially means they will likely claim the user cannot be tracked as the logs are not recorded at all.

Proton Mail's end-to-end encryption and zero-access encryption ensure only you can see your emails.

Not even Proton can view the content of your emails and attachments," Proton says on its homepage. Due to the encrypted security offered by the provider, anyone would be able to create an email ID and use the service anonymously.

The mail threats sent to the schools, institutions and government offices here last year, were sent using Beeble.com which is another encrypted email solution.