Spurned woman engineer sends bomb threats to 11 states for framing love interest, arrested

A 30-year-old woman engineer, deeply offended over being spurned, scripted a dramatic tale of revenge and allegedly sent hoax bomb threats in 11 states to frame her love interest. The accused, Rene Joshilda, used fake email IDs she created in the name of Divij Prabhakar, who did not love her back and got married recently, to frame him. Joshilda used VPNs and fake email IDs to mask her digital footprints and evade being traced and gave police of multiple states a hard time as their investigations always hit a dead end, till one mistake gave her away.

According to police, Joshilda completed her engineering in Chennai and then did a course in robotics and was working as a senior consultant at an MNC. During a project in Bengaluru, she met Divij Prabhakar and fell for him, but the feelings were one-sided. Divij never reciprocated her feelings and married someone else in February, leaving her shattered and fuming. Unable to cope with the emotional loss, she seethed with anger and decided to unleash her fury at him.

She first created several fake email IDs by using variations of his name and started sending bomb threats to schools, hospitals, and sports venues.

Sent mail threats to blow up schools, hospitals, and public venues

Joshilda sent threats to blow up as many as 21 spots in and around Ahmedabad alone, including the Narendra Modi Stadium in Motera, the Geneva Liberal School in Sarkhej, and a civil hospital, Joint CP (Crime) Ahmedabad, Sharad Singhal, told the media.

She sent threats to 11 states, including Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala, Bihar, Telangana, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, and Haryana, claiming to target public events and VVIP visits, setting off high security alerts and mobilisation of security forces in vain.

But, on June 12, when Air India’s Ahmedabad-London flight crashed, leading to the loss of at least 274 lives, when the plane hit the BJ Medical College building, the college administration received an email. “I think now you know power. Like we sent you mail yesterday, we crashed the Air India plane with our former CM (Vijay Rupani). We know the police would have thought that the plane crash was a hoax and ignored it. Well done to our pilot. Now you know we are not playing. Now you know.” This mail, police said, has been traced to Rene Joshilda.

One login mistake helped cops track her

Ahmedabad police officials reveal that Joshilda always covered her tracks well while sending out threats by using her tech expertise. “The number she would use to create email IDs would be virtual. She sent threat emails through the Tor browser (a network for anonymous communication) and the Dark Web. She took several precautions. She was very smart and never revealed her digital trail. But she made a small mistake, and our cybercrime wing and crime branch tracked her down,” Singhal said.

Joshilda made a mistake six months ago when she logged into her real and fake email accounts from the same device on one occasion. This exposed her IP address and tied her to the hoax emails. “That one careless login gave her away,” a police officer said.

Joshilda was arrested from her home in Chennai by Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Police after a months-long investigation. The cops seized devices and digital records from her residence that provided damning evidence.