The Mumbai police on Tuesday resolved the mystery shrouding the spotting of parachute-like objects over the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) on Saturday last, as they arrested two employees of an event management firm that had released gas-filled balloons to promote a cricket match organised by a diamond merchant company.
Two days after the five unidentified parachute-like objects objected over the Mumbai sent the security agencies in a tizzy, the city airport police took into custody two persons — identified as Kunal Shah and Nilesh Shrimankar employed with an event management company that had released promotional balloons into the restricted airspace between 5.54 pm and 6.30 pm on Saturday. A pilot of the Jet Airways reported the sighting of the unidentified parachute-like objects to the Air Traffic Control (ATC) at the airport. An ATC supervisor too spotted it from binoculars around the same time.
Given that the unidentified objects were found floating for more than half an hour, there was an apprehension among the security agencies if the movement of the objects were remote-controlled from the ground. The spotting of “parachute-like” objects over the city airport had naturally caused anxiety among the central agencies.