Two phone calls were received at the Calcutta airport in quick succession on Monday morning — one said an airborne flight was about to be hijacked and the other warned that the aircraft would be blown up with a hydrogen bomb.
Hours later, the Bidhannagar police said the calls, traced to a man in Bongaon, in North 24-Parganas, were a hoax.
The man is mentally challenged and was admitted to a mental hospital earlier, police said.
The airport received the calls a day after an Alliance Air flight from Lilabari in Assam had to make an emergency landing at the Calcutta airport after a hoax call to the city airport.
Close to 100 flights of Indian carriers such as IndiGo, Air India, Vistara and Akasa Air have over the past week been delayed, diverted or forced to make emergency landings because of false bomb alarms. Among them were several international flights.
The calls prompted a flurry of activity at the airport, leading to the issuance of a “high alert” and multiple meetings among airport officials, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which is responsible for the airport’s security, and the Bidhannagar police.
The calls were received at the landline number of the security check-in wing of Air India around 11am.
“The male caller said a flight that had taken off from the airport was about to be hijacked. A second call came shortly thereafter. This time the caller said there was a hydrogen bomb in the plane and it would be activated soon,” said an officer
of the Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate.
Airport officials alerted the police and held meetings with the CISF to decide on the steps to be taken following the calls.
A senior police officer said the airport is not new to threat calls but each such call has to be taken seriously until proved a hoax.
CISF officers said a specific protocol is followed in such cases.
“There is no scope for complacency. Every time a threat call comes, security inside the airport is tightened. This may cause inconvenience to the fliers and security check-ins may be delayed. But the protocol has to be followed if there is an alert,” said a CISF officer.
Officers of the Bidhannagar commissionerate said they tracked down the phone number from where thecalls were made.
“A team reached the location at Bongaon in North 24-Parganas. The man who made the call was found to be of unsound mental health,” said an officer of the commissionerate.
“We found documents of his admission to a mental hospital. He has also been to a rehabilitation centre. We also came to know that the man had made a similar threat call to the airport a few weeks ago,” the officer said.
The man was detained but not arrested because of his poor mental health, the officer said.
