Mumbai went on high alert on Thursday after an email warned of bomb blasts at the city's main airport, the mayor's office, megastar Amitabh Bachchan's Jalsa bungalow and a Punjab National Bank branch, a police official said.
The mail, timed at 10:52 a.m., came from a Gmail address, reduak079@gmail.com, and went to PNB's Mumbai zonal office, the Local Crime Branch at Cuffe Parade and the bank's Zaveri Bazar branch in south Mumbai.
Its subject line referred to a blast at a PNB branch in the city at 1:11 p.m. The text also cited November 27 and December 31 and listed further targets: banks across Mumbai, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, Mahalaxmi Stadium, Jalsa in Juhu and the mayor's office.
According to the official, the mail invoked Khalistan and named a purported outfit, the "Khalistan National Army". Investigators have not yet established whether the threat is genuine or who sent the mail.
Thursday's mail is the third to name Jalsa in three weeks. On October 23, a mail to Mayor Ritu Tawde and Deputy Mayor Sanjay Ghadi warned of a blast at the mayor's office at 3:11 p.m. that day, a grenade attack on a school on October 31 and an attack on Bachchan's home at some point between October 31 and November 27. It also named the Mahalaxmi Racecourse venue of singer Diljit Dosanjh's concert on November 27. The BMC headquarters was searched and nothing suspicious was found; security and surveillance were raised at the sites named.
A second mail, marked as well to the Bombay High Court and the Mahalaxmi Racecourse, led to searches at Jalsa and the other sites, again without anything suspicious being found, police said.
After the October 23 threat, the 84-year-old actor greeted the fans who gather outside his home every Sunday from behind a bulletproof glass screen set up on an elevated platform, with his son and actor Abhishek Bachchan and security personnel standing by.
The threats come amid a run of security scares. This week a hijack threat to a Kolkata-Mumbai Air India flight proved to be a hoax and led to a passenger being apprehended. On Thursday, police said a mail threatening a blast at Dosanjh's Indore concert had been sent from the hacked account of a man in Dewas.
Searches were under way at the sites named in Thursday's mail, the official said.
(With inputs from PTI and media reports)