Tensions’ prevailed at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport after the Delhi Police received a call from international number about bomb on the flight coming from Moscow on Thursday night. However, the call was found to be hoax as no bomb was found on the plane after it was searched thoroughly by the security agencies.
According to a senior police official, a police control room (PCR) call was received at around 11:15 PM that a flight which is coming from Moscow and scheduled to land at 3:20 AM, had a bomb in it. According to the police, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) received an e-mail warning of bombs on the flight on Thursday night. This comes days after the Indian Air Force (IAF) had to scramble Su-30MKI fighter jets to shadow an Iranian Mahan Air flight following inputs from Lahore’s Air Traffic Control (ATC) about a possible bomb threat, which turned out to be false. The Mahan Air flight W581 was on its way from Tehran to Guangzhou in China when an alert was triggered. “Acting on the call, police team alerted the airport authorities, security agencies including bomb squad and reached the spot with all the necessary equipments to detect bomb,” said a senior police official. “At around 3:20 AM, the flight SU 232 (Moscow to Delhi) landed at runway number 29 and all 386 passengers and 16 crew members in it were evacuated safely,” said senior police official. “The plane was taken to a safe place at airport where security agencies along with the bomb squad check it. However, after checking flight no bomb was found on it,” said the official. ‘It was an International call which alerted them about bomb, Meanwhile police teams had also checked baggage of the passengers but there was no bomb,” said the official adding that further investigation is going on and relevant authorities have been informed.
This is not first time such an incident has occurred. Earlier, on September 30, a Malaysia-bound flight was delayed over a false bomb alarm after a fight between two passengers onboard plane at IGIA. Four passengers allegedly involved in the incident were handed over to the local police. Among other incidents, on August 12, 2019, IGIA received a hoax bomb call for Terminal-2 that affected its operations for around 70 minutes.
