Gujarat police to query Google over 500,000 fake Gmail IDs linked to bomb hoax

The investigation in Gujarat began after a bomb threat email received by the state government on September 10, days ahead of the recent New Delhi summit of the BRICS. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphotos Police will question Google over a ‌lack of safeguards after smashing a criminal network that set ​up and managed more than 500,000 fake Gmail accounts ⁠to send hoax bomb threats to government offices, a police official told Reuters on Tuesday (September 15, 2026).India is one of Google’s largest markets by users, where the U.S. ‌tech giant is already under scrutiny after authorities found a pattern of criminals misusing its web development platform, Firebase, for ‌financial scams.Gujarat police broke ‌up ⁠an email network this week that they described as sending “inter-state” bomb ⁠threats and arrested two individuals, uncovering 513,847 Gmail IDs and passwords being used since 2022.Reuters is the first to report that Google itself figures in the investigation. The ​scale of fake Gmail accounts ‌in use is unprecedented, Vivek Bheda, a senior cybercrime official of the Gujarat police, told Reuters.“We will write to Google, ask them to make some policy changes so (safeguards) cannot be bypassed,” Mr. Bheda said, ‌adding that police planned to formally designate Google as a ​subjectof the investigation soon.Google, owned by Alphabet Inc, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It was ⁠not immediately clear what legal charges or penalties, if any, Google could face.Burgeoning cybercrime causes losses running ‌into more than $2 billion a year from financial scams, and its law enforcement has increasingly tackled technology platforms seen to have been exploited to enable such crimes.The Gujarat investigation began after a bomb threat email received by the state government on September 10, days ahead of the recent New Delhi summit of the BRICS grouping.It also threatened countries ‌cooperating with India during the summit, police said in a statement.The threats proved ​false, Mr. Bheda said, adding that one of those arrested was in contact with a buyer in Bangladesh who purchased batches ⁠of the accounts and paid partly in cryptocurrency to send the fake ⁠emails.Also of concern to police, Mr. said, was the fact that each fraudulent account employed two-factor authentication, an extra security step ‌Google offers to keep accounts safe.How the criminal network managed to do this for such a large number of accounts is ​another angle of investigation. Published - September 15, 2026 05:29 pm IST