Fifty flights operated by Indian carriers received bomb threats on Sunday, reported PTI. This took the total number of bomb threats received by airlines to over 350 in 14 days.
Akasa Air said that 15 of its flights got security alerts during the day. All the threats turned out to be hoaxes and the flights were allowed to continue to their destinations after thorough inspections.
A total of 18 IndiGo flights and 17 flights operated by Vistara also received threats.
At least two IndiGo flights – one travelling from Pune to Jodhpur and another from Kozhikode to Dammam – had to be diverted.
Apart from them, flight 6E 11 (Delhi-Istanbul), 6E 92 (Jeddah-Mumbai), 6E 112 (Goa-Ahmedabad), 6E 125 (Bengaluru-Jharsuguda), 6E 127 (Amritsar-Ahmedabad) and 6E 135 (Kolkata-Pune) operated by IndiGo were among those that received security alerts.
Earlier in the day, Union Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu said that the Centre is looking at steps to ban those who have issued hoax bomb threats to airlines from flying.
“We are also taking the support of international agencies, law enforcement agencies, the Intelligence Bureau to prevent these,” Naidu was quoted as saying by PTI. “We are planning to bring changes to two civil aviation laws. Those who resort to these kinds of activities will be punished severely and imposed a penalty. We are also taking steps to ban such persons from flying. We will announce them in the coming days.”
Amid the spate of bomb threats, the Centre on Saturday told the social media platforms to remove or block access to misinformation, failing which they would no longer be shielded from criminal action.
The Centre said in its advisory: “Such hoax bomb threats while affecting a large number of citizens also destabilise the economic security of the country.” It added that the scale of such threats has become “dangerously unrestrained” because of the options of forwarding, reposting or retweeting misinformation.
Several hotels in Andhra Pradesh’s Tirupati have received bomb threats via email in the last three days, the police said on Sunday, reported PTI.
“We reacted swiftly when we received complaints and our teams conducted thorough checks,” L Subbarayudu, Superintendent of Police at Tirupati told PTI. “But they [bomb threats] turned out to be fake. We are booking cases and investigations into these are going on.”
At least 10 hotels in Uttar Pradesh’s Lucknow also received threats during the day, reported India Today.
“Bombs are hidden in black bags on the grounds of your hotel,” read the threat email. “I want $55,000 [Rs 46 lakh], or I will detonate the explosives and blood will spread everywhere. Any attempt at defusing the bombs will detonate them.”
The hotels that received the threats are Marriott, Saraca, Piccadily, Comfort Vista, Fortune, Lemon Tree, Clark Awadh, Casa, Dayal Gateway, and Silvette.