Ahmedabad: Things can’t get more bizarre than this. At least 21 bomb threats to several locations across 11 states, have now been traced to a young woman who planned the whole operation to ‘punish’ a man who spurned her advances.
These bomb threats through e-mail, all of which turned out to be hoaxes in the end, sent officials into a tizzy. Schools had to be evacuated and entire stadiums searched for explosives that didn’t exist.
The Gujarat Police finally managed to crack the case and arrested 26-year-old senior consultant at Deloitte, on Monday. She is an electrical engineer, who later specialised in robotics.
According to Sharad Singhal, joint commissioner of police, Crime Branch, the woman – originally from Tamil Nadu – harbored a fervent, one-sided love for a male colleague.
Things took a dark turn after the man she loved married someone else in February 2025. Consumed by a desire for retribution, she allegedly leveraged her advanced cyber skills, including the dark web, to create numerous fake email IDs in his name, then dispatched threatening emails to prominent institutions and public spaces.
“This was a calculated act of vengeance,” Singhal said, adding, “She thought she could remain invisible on the dark web, meticulously hiding her digital footprint. But a single, crucial mistake allowed the sharp eye of our cybercrime unit to unravel her elaborate scheme.”
The Ahmedabad Police traced her digital breadcrumbs, leading them to Chennai, where she was apprehended. The investigation has unearthed a significant cybercrime module, with police recovering a trove of digital and physical evidence from her possession.
Investigation has revealed that she had been sending such threatening emails for over a year, accumulating a total of 21 confirmed instances. Authorities are now probing whether any accomplices were involved in her elaborate plan.
Among the high-profile targets was the iconic Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. On April 14, just before an IPL match, an email threatening to blow up the stadium sent security agencies going through every nook and corner of the vast premises.
Preliminary investigations suggested the email originated from Germany-Romania, a detail that now points directly to Renee’s methods of cloaking her location.
The threats continued, even targeting an Ahmedabad school during the IPL final. Geneva Liberal School on S P Ring Road received a chilling email, claiming a bomb had been planted to draw attention to a 2023 Hyderabad rape and dowry case.
This was where Renee made her mistake. She named the man and his family in the mail, accusing the police of inaction. The mail stated that only the death of children would force them to investigate properly. The sender also placed a Rs 1 crore demand on behalf of the ‘tortured’ daughter-in-law.
Once the police traced the man, it was only a matter of time before they got to the accused in Chennai.
Cyber experts have pointed to how such cybercrimes can cause widespread public panic and disrupt normal life.
