A bomb scare on an IndiGo airlines Patna to Delhi flight caused panic and brought the operations to a standstill at the Jay Prakash Narayan International Airport in Bihar capital here on the intervening night of Thursday and Friday.

The incident occurred when passengers had boarded flight 6E 2126 and it was ready to take off at around 8.55pm on Thursday. One passenger was heard claiming that he had a bomb in his bag and would explode it.

According to the sources the passenger, identified as one Rishi Chand Singh Bedi, apparently mentally disturbed, talked about the bomb apparently in an argument with his parents who were travelling with him.

Bedi’s words were enough to cause and alarm among the other passengers and the aircraft crew. His parents tried hard to convince others that he had spoken in anger and it should not be taken seriously, but it did not have much affect and everybody panicked.

“The Central Industrial Security Force control room received a call from Indigo Airlines at 8.55pm that one of their passengers — Rishi Chand Singh Bedi, 24 — mentioned about a bomb in Patna – Delhi flight 6E 2126, whose scheduled departure was at 8.20pm,” Patna airport director Anchal Prakash said.

It threw the airport into a tizzy with necessary standard operation protocol (SOP) being initiated and a meeting of the bomb threat assessment committee (BTAC) being convened to assess the situation. All the 134 passengers were quickly deboarded. “No suspicious object was found in the anti-sabotage check. The IndiGo airlines cancelled the flight and Bedi was handed over to the police,” Prakash said.

Doctors at the airport examined Bedi. He was whisked away by the police and interrogated before being produced before a magistrate. He works with a private company at Hajipur in Vaishali district.

The stranded passengers were sent to Delhi on another flight at around 9am on Friday.