Unrequited love leads to bomb hoax: Chennai woman arrested in Air India threat case

The accused, Rene Joshilda, a robotics engineer and senior consultant at Deloitte, stunned investigators with the scale, planning and emotional motive behind her actions.

By  Storyboard18Jun 24, 2025 4:30 PM
Unrequited love leads to bomb hoax: Chennai woman arrested in Air India threat case
The accused, Rene Joshilda, a robotics engineer and senior consultant at Deloitte, stunned investigators with the scale, planning and emotional motive behind her actions.

In a chilling twist that sounds more like the plot of a psychological film thriller than a police report, Gujarat police on Monday arrested a woman from Chennai for sending a series of bomb threats, as per media reports.

The threat included an email claiming responsibility for the recent Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad - all allegedly to seek revenge on a man who married someone else.

The accused, Rene Joshilda, a robotics engineer and senior consultant at Deloitte, stunned investigators with the scale, planning and emotional motive behind her actions.

What began as a terror scare soon spiralled into a tale of unrequited love and calculated obsession.

"We crashed the Air India plane yesterday. You thought it was a hoax. Now you know we're serious," one of her emails chillingly read. That email, along with 20 others, was sent to schools, a medical college, and even the iconic Narendra Modi Stadium - triggering widespread panic, evacuations, and emergency responses.

But there was no crash. No bombs. Just one woman's alleged vendetta.

According to Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Sharad Singhal, the digital trail led investigators through a web of deceit. This means multiple accounts created with similar usernames, dark web masking techniques to conceal her location, and an elaborate digital footprint crafted to point suspicion toward an innocent man, the report added.

"She was in a one-sided relationship with a man who married someone else in February," said Singhal. "To frame him, she created fake email IDs in his name and used them to send bomb threats across the country."

It was only after forensic scrutiny of the email servers and a careful trace of IP addresses that authorities zeroed in on Joshilda, who was operating from Chennai. Her high-profile corporate job and tech-savvy background made her an unlikely suspect - but also one capable of carrying out such a sophisticated operation.

For now, Joshilda remains in police custody, and further investigation is underway to determine the full extent of her actions and any accomplices.

First Published on Jun 24, 2025 4:30 PM

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