A Class 12 student from Gujarat has been arrested by the Mumbai Police for allegedly threatening to blow up a plane, PTI reported quoting an official on Monday. As per the report, the accused posted a tweet claiming that an aircraft of airline Akasa Air "will go down". The 18-year-old student had tweeted "AkasaAir Boeing 737 Max will go down", the official said. After the tweet, the newly inaugurated private airline started by Late Rakesh Jhunjhunwala had lodged a complaint at the Airport Police Station in Mumbai.
Taking action on the complaint, an FIR was registered against unidentified persons under Indian Penal Code Sections 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) and 506(2) (criminal intimidation). During the investigation, the Mumbai Police traced the IP address of the tweet to Surat in Gujarat, following which a team was sent there and the student was arrested on March 27, the official said.
On being interrogated, the accused told the Mumbai Police that his intention was not to create chaos. He was interested in knowing about aircraft and had not realised the repercussions of such a post on social media, the official said. After one-day custody, the accused was released on a bail of Rs 5,000 as his exams were going on, PTI reported.
While this is the first such incident reported by Akasa Air, bomb hoax calls are quite common in Indian aviation industry. Recently, a 59-year-old man, who was denied boarding on Hyderabad-Chennai flight for turning up late at the airport in Hyderabad, made a hoax call to the police saying there was a bomb on the plane.
In another such incident, Karnataka Police arrested a woman from Kerala, who threatened to explode a bomb at the Bengaluru International Airport while arguing with the authorities regarding delay to board the flight.
