Hoax bomb threat jolts Delhi airport: officials tighten up scrutiny

By NewsGram Staff-Writer

Six international flights got cancelled at Delhi and Bangalore airport owing to threat calls made within a span of ten minutes on Saturday.

According to reports, Delhi had to call back two flights when they were about to exit the Indian air space. Further, a third flight was stopped from approaching the runway immediately after a call was received at the Gurgaon call centre of Delhi International Airport limited (DIAL).

As stated by the security officials, the threat call warned of bombs on three flights. Two of the three flights were Hong Kong bound and the third was Zurich bound. A high level bomb threat committee looked into the threat call and declared the threat as specific, according to a statement made by an official of CISF( Central Industrial Security Force).

Both the flights bound to Hong Kong were asked by the air traffic control to withdraw and taken to the isolation bay and the Zurich bound flight was taken to another bay from the runaway.

The bomb disposal squad of the CiSF did a thorough checking of the escorted passengers and removed baggage from the cabins of the concerned flights, said a CISF official, as reported in Hindustan Times.

It was for the first time that the three isolation bays of the Delhi airport were put to use simultaneously; the bays had been constructed to take planes with explosives in them. The hoax bomb alerts acted as a litmus test for the CISF officials deputed with the duty to look over the security of the airport.

The CISF staff took around four hours to declare that the call was hoaxed after a proper scrutiny of the flights and frisking of the passengers. Hoax callers should be penalized thoroughly as it consumes a lot of time and over 600 passengers were subjected to precarity owing to the same, said an airport official as quoted in the leading daily.