As many as 41 airports in the country received an email threat warning of a bomb on their premises and all of them were later found out to be hoax calls.
The Director General of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), Zulfiquar Hasan, told The Hindu that such instances have been on the rise in the past two-and-a-half months, including threats received for various airlines. He said six men have already been arrested across the country by local police teams. The BCAS has also proposed a five-year ban on flying for miscreants across all airlines to the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the senior official said.
“Threats have been received through phone calls, notes inside aircraft lavatories as well as emails. Some callers have been traced, and there have been a few arrests as well. Police teams are also analysing handwriting on various notes. As far as emails are concerned, some have been traced, while others are being investigated,” Mr. Hasan said.
Airport sources said that on Tuesday, 41 airport directors received a bomb threat mail at 12.40 p.m. The mail was received from exhumedyou888@gmail.com stating: “There are explosives hidden in the airport. The bombs will soon explode. You will all die.” All airports constituted Bomb Threat Assessment Committees and declared the threat as “non-specific” or hoax. The mail claimed that the “KNR Group” was behind it, which also issued threats to Delhi schools earlier in May. The threat was issued to an email ID of the Airports Authority of India (AAI).
Meanwhile, Chennai received its sixth threat in recent days on Tuesday. The threat, sent by email, was for an Emirates flight from Dubai to Chennai, which was to land at 2.35 a.m. but was diverted to Bengaluru due to bad weather and rain. It later landed in the city around 9 a.m., airport sources said.
This plane and another flight to Dubai too were checked following which officials declared the threat as a hoax. The airport has received six such threats in recent times, sources said. On Monday night too, a bomb threat was sent via email.
At Coimbatore airport too, security was tightened after airport officials were informed of the email. CISF personnel carried out extensive searches inside the terminal building with a trained sniffer dog. The bomb detection and disposal squad of the Coimbatore City Police rushed to the spot and carried out searches outside the terminal building, including the car parking area and surroundings.
Patna, Jaipur and Vadodara airports were also among those that received threats.
The BCAS chief also said the security agency was in a dialogue with airlines on how to to trace culprits when they are travelling with the airline as well as minimise passenger inconvenience when such threat calls are received.
(With inputs from Chennai and Coimbatore)
