Delhi High Court seeks report from Police on bomb scare in schools
Delhi HC orders report on school bomb scare plans, seeks SOPs & action details after recent threats; drills, response time key.
The Delhi High Court has directed the Delhi Police and the Delhi government to submit a report detailing their actions to ensure the safe evacuation of children from schools in the event of a bomb scare. Justice Subramonium Prasad specifically asked for information on the number of mock drills conducted in schools and the time it would take for authorities to reach a school in case of a bomb threat. The court emphasized that schools and authorities should have plans in place to minimize reliance on parents during such incidents, as the primary responsibility for evacuating children lies with schools and authorities. The court also ordered the government and police to explain their procedures for investigating hoax calls received by schools. This direction came in response to a petition filed by advocate Arpit Bhargava last year, seeking detailed action plans from the police and education department to address hoax bomb threats.
The petition also called for a response plan that could be implemented across schools in Delhi. A status report on these matters is to be filed within ten days, with the next hearing scheduled for May 16. During the hearing, the Delhi government's Standing Counsel Santosh Kumar Tripathi highlighted the challenge of deploying police personnel to all of Delhi's approximately 5,500 schools. However, Justice Prasad noted that the status report lacked key details, including the absence of a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for schools. The court raised questions about the immediate actions to be taken in the event of a bomb threat at different types of schools, the alert mechanisms for such situations, the frequency of drills conducted, and the monitoring of these drills. Given the missing details, the court granted additional time for the authorities to file a more comprehensive affidavit. The court's directives come in the wake of an email threat received by over 100 schools in the Delhi NCR region on May 1, which led to evacuations and student dismissals.
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