Karnataka High Court refuses to quash bomb threat email case against a 22-year-old, holding that a claim that his internet connection was not working on the day is a matter of defence to be tested at trial, with the allegations still untested and no view expressed on guilt.
Bengaluru: The Karnataka High Court has declined to quash a charge sheet against a 22-year-old man accused of sending an email to the Bengaluru Police Commissioner that threatened bomb blasts at the Kempegowda International Airport and several shopping malls and purported to come from a banned terrorist organisation, observing that a threat of this kind is not rendered harmless because the sender never intended to carry it out [Abhay Shee v. State of Karnataka and Another].
Justice M. Nagaprasanna dismissed the petition filed under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution read with Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and Section 528 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), in an oral order dated September 1, 2026. The allegations are untested, the Court has expressed no view on the petitioner’s guilt, and he remains presumed innocent until the trial court decides on evidence.
How the case reached the Court
The prosecution case is that, after a dispute with friends on online platforms in October 2025, the petitioner sent an email on November 30, 2025, to the Office of the Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru City, naming the airport and several malls as targets and carrying a demand for payment to avert the blasts. A complaint by a Sub-Inspector of the Cyber Crime Police Station led to Crime No. 66 of 2025, registered initially under Section 66F of the Information Technology Act, 2000, which deals with cyber terrorism.
The Investigating Officer did not carry that offence forward. The charge sheet in C.C. No. 41074/2026, pending before the 45th Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Bengaluru, invokes Section 351(4) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which punishes criminal intimidation by an anonymous communication, and Section 66D of the IT Act, which punishes cheating by personation using a computer resource. The prosecution alleges that the petitioner created several email accounts in the name of another person, a witness in the case, and used them to send the message. The petitioner sought to quash the FIR and the charge sheet.
The contentions
The petitioner’s single ground was that his internet connection was not functional on November 30, 2025, which, he said, made it improbable that he sent the emails. The State argued that the omission of Section 66F from the charge sheet did not efface the allegations, that the offence could be added later if admissible material emerged, and that the connectivity claim was a matter of defence. It stressed that the alleged threat concerned an international airport and public places visited by thousands of people.
What the Court said
Justice Nagaprasanna said the message, bearing the name of a proscribed organisation and naming public places as targets, could not be treated as innocuous, and that its alleged origin in a private quarrel did not lessen its gravity.
“A false threat of terrorism is not rendered innocuous merely because the person issuing it never intended to execute the threatened act.”
The Court added that the gravity lies not only in the chance of the event happening but also in the fear a threat can generate, the disruption it causes and the public resources diverted to verify it, because law enforcement cannot afford to presume that a threat to public safety is a hoax.
The connectivity defence
Turning to the petitioner’s plea, the Court held that the failure of one internet connection does not by itself make transmission impossible:
“An electronic mail account is not inextricably tied to a particular computer, a particular internet connection or a particular geographical location.”
Email can be accessed through different devices, networks and modes of connectivity, it said, so the complaint the petitioner made to his Internet Service Provider might be a circumstance in his defence but could not be elevated into conclusive proof that the message could not have originated from him. The duration of any outage, the devices used to access the accounts and the evidentiary worth of the electronic trail were matters for the trial court, not for a mini-trial in quashing proceedings.
The Court relied on Kaptan Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh [(2021) 9 SCC 35], where the Supreme Court held that after a charge sheet is filed the High Court must not appreciate evidence or act as an appellate court.
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The statutory provisions
On the two offences, the Court explained that Section 351(4) of the BNS is an aggravated form of criminal intimidation, attracted where the threat comes through an anonymous communication or the sender conceals his name or abode, and that it must be read with the ingredients of Section 351(1). Section 66D of the IT Act, it said, uses the computer resource as the medium, while personation and the ingredients of cheating remain indispensable. Whether those ingredients are made out, the Court said, must be determined on appreciation of evidence.
Concluding, it held that the petitioner could not be relieved of the proceedings on the solitary contention that his connection was defunct, since authorship, transmission and attribution of the email must be tested before the competent criminal court. The petition was rejected, and the pending interlocutory application stood disposed of.
Why the order matters
The order marks the limit of quashing at the charge sheet stage: a factual defence such as a disputed internet outage, however neatly documented, is for the trial court unless it is of an unimpeachable character that demolishes the case at its inception. It also records the High Court’s view that hoax or not, a threat invoking terrorism and naming public places has to be taken seriously by the State.
Nothing in the order decides who sent the email. The trial court will examine the electronic trail and the defence, and the prosecution must prove its case on evidence.
Case Title: Abhay Shee v. State of Karnataka and Another [Writ Petition No. 24177 of 2026 (GM-RES)]
Bench: Justice M. Nagaprasanna, Karnataka High Court
Date of Order: September 1, 2026
Appearances: Mr. Uday Shankar M., Advocate, for the petitioner; Ms. Waheeda M.M., High Court Government Pleader, for the respondents