After unabated bomb threat messages to multiple Indian airlines in the past one week, lead to diversions, cancellations and passenger inconvenience, the Union government is planning to make hoax threat calls to Indian airlines a cognisable offence. The government is also planning to put hoax callers on a ‘no fly list’.
Union Civil Aviation Minister Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu announced this on Monday, in the National Capital. Currently, this stringent law is invoked against people who make hoax calls and endanger the safety of an aircraft when it is in the air, not on the ground. Meanwhile, two top aviation security officers met Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan and discussed the unabated incidents of bomb threats to Indian airlines, leading to diversions, cancellations and passenger inconvenience.
Naidu said amendments are being planned to aviation security rules as well as the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against Safety of Civil Aviation Act, 1982. “We have come to the conclusion that there are two areas that we can explore - 1) Amendment in Aircraft Security Rules...one of the ideas that we want to propagate by changing these rules is that once we catch hold of the perpetrator who is behind this, we want to put them in the no-flying list... 2) Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against Safety of Civil Aviation Act...”, he said.
“While it (SUASCA) takes care of the offences when the aircraft is in travel, in flight, if we want to address these kinds of threats that have been happening. We want to take strict action against people who are behind this when there is a fake or hoax threat that they are trying to do, we have to cover the act on the ground and the airport also. So we are trying to make an amendment. Our legal team has worked very thoroughly on this and we are coming up with an amendment,” Naidu said.
“We want to make it a cognisable offence. Even though these are hoax threats we cannot take it lightly.. we have a set protocol,” he said. The Union Minister said that the aviation ministry is in consultation with other ministries such as the Home Ministry. “We are trying to use intelligence, IB and all the other important people who are there in this, especially home affairs and all, everyone is cooperating together. We are taking it very seriously and we want to ensure that these kinds of incidents do not happen.”
The minister said multiple meetings have been held with stakeholders since the spate of calls began so that the people making such threats can be put on the no-fly list after they are identified.
He added that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre would not compromise the safety and security of passengers. The minister added that around 10 per cent security has been enhanced at airports across the country in the wake of bomb threats.
In a related development, a key high-level meeting was also held in the Ministry of Home Affairs on Monday in which updates were taken from aviation security body Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) and the Central Industrial Security Force, which is responsible for security at airports. Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) Director General (DG) Zulfiquar Hasan and Director General of Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) Rajwinder Singh Bhatti met Mohan at the latter’s office at North Block here.
The three officers remained closeted for about half an hour. However, details of the meeting are not known immediately. The CISF guards 68 civilian airports in the country.
