A “desperate husband” who allegedly made a hoax bomb call to Delhi airport to prevent his wife leaving the country was arrested on Saturday.
Police said Nasiruddin, 29, had called Indira Gandhi International Airport on August 8, named his wife and said she was a suicide bomber who planned to set off a blast on a Dubai or Saudi Arabia-bound flight.
Nasiruddin wanted to stop his wife Rafiya aka Zamina from boarding her flight to the Gulf, where she planned to migrate and work, the police added.
The 7pm hoax call led international flights from the airport — already on a red alert because of the approaching Independence Day — to be suspended for a while. A massive search was launched before the authorities realised the call was a hoax.
“Desperate husband calls wife a ‘fidayeen’ in hoax call. Aircraft bombing threat call of 8th August 2019 solved. Accused Nasiruddin, 29 yrs, arrested from Bawana, Delhi,” the Delhi police tweeted on Saturday afternoon.
“Accused owns a bag manufacturing factory in Chennai and had married his employee namely Rafiya @ Zamina who was now planning to leave India to work in the Gulf. When his attempts to stop Rafiya from leaving India failed, he called up DIAL (Delhi International Airport Limited) with the bomb threat call to prevent her from boarding the intended flight.…”
In June this year, a National Investigation Agency court in Ahmedabad had jailed a Mumbai businessman for life and fined him Rs 5 crore for a mid-air hijack hoax in October 2017. This was the first conviction under an amended anti-hijack law.
Businessman Birju Kishor Salla was accused of triggering a scare on a Delhi-bound Jet Airways flight from Mumbai by leaving an English-and-Urdu note in the aircraft’s toilet that said: “There are hijackers on board and explosives on the plane.”
Salla’s note asked that the plane be flown to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. It was diverted to Ahmedabad where it made an emergency landing. The court said the crew members and the passengers would be compensated from the fine amount of Rs 5 crore.
