Hoax bomb messages by teen forces UP Police to change protocol

GHAZIABAD: The UP Police has been forced into making procedural changes to its UP100 portal, after a 15-year-old student of Class 11 made multiple hoax bomb threats on the portal, just days before Republic Day.

The boy sent the messages using the UP100 portal on January 24 and 25, just ahead of the Republic Day celebrations. The boy only provided nine digits of the cellphone numbers, and sent several such messages. The multiple hoaxes also forced the police to rope in the UP special task force (STF) to track their sender.

Police sources said the boy was “miffed with the system” and inspired by the Bollywood movie ‘A Wednesday.’

The boy’s location was traced on Sunday, and it was decided to let him off considering exceptional “family conditions”, police officers said. However, the incident has implored the UP Police into altering the procedure to register a “critical” threat on the portal. UP100 is an integrated 24x7 emergency response system of the UP Police’s, and responds to calls, e-mails and social media posts. Now, a two-stage OTP verification process for “critical cases” will be introduced soon.

“We are now going to introduce two-stage verification process to authenticate the user sending messages on the UP100 portal chat,” Mohammad Imran, superintendent of police (UP100), Lucknow, said.