Hundreds evacuated at IIT Farmagudi campus following bomb scare

Margao: Several hundred students and staff of the IIT at Farmagudi, Ponda, were evacuated from the campus by the police on Thursday to facilitate a search operation following a bomb threat. After a thorough combing operation by security agencies, the threat turned out to be a hoax.
Police sources said they were informed by the management of the IIT Farmagudi campus on Thursday morning of an email message that said bombs were placed on the IIT campuses at Farmagudi, Bhubaneshwar, and Goa. IIT-Goa is currently operating from a temporary campus at Goa Engineering College (GEC) at Farmagudi.
Police sources said the email was received at 4am and bore the name of the sender as Umpathi Padmanathan. It said the bomb would detonate at 11am.
An emergency response protocol was immediately activated. A posse of policemen, fire and emergency services, bomb disposal unit, and sniffer dog squads were pressed into service.
Around 600 students in the hostels and classrooms were among those evacuated. After a three-hour long security check, the security agencies concluded that the bomb scare was fraudulent.
“The entire campus has been searched by the security agencies but no indication of any explosive substance was found,” said Rajesh Sakhalkar, Ponda joint mamlatdar. “However, the students have been told to alert the police if they notice anything suspicious.”
Ponda police are investigating the matter, including verifying the identity of the fraudulent email sender and tracking them down.