Hijack threat to Delhi-Kabul Air India flight, security beefed up at airports
Deployment of more skymarshals on these flights is reportedly being strongly considered
New Delhi: Intelligence agencies have tipped off India’s aviation authorities about a hijack threat to Air India’s Delhi-Kabul flight following which an alert has been issued and security beefed up further at all Indian airports. The alert was confirmed by sources in the aviation security establishment.
Air India sources said that alerts are passed on from time to time and that the airline takes the alerts seriously but did not comment on this specific threat.
Sources pointed out that Air India currently operates five flights per week from New Delhi to the Afghan capital. The alert comes barely three weeks before the arrival of US President Barack Obama to India on an official visit.
Security agencies are on high alert as Pakistan-based or Pakistan-backed terrorists may look to carry out a massive terror strike just before the high-profile visit to attract global attention.
The threat is also ominous since the last hijack of an Indian plane that of the erstwhile Indian Airlines flight IC-814 — took place in 1999 to Afghanistan. That flight had been hijacked from the Nepalese capital Kathmandu to the Afghan city of Kandahar at a time when the Taliban was in power in Afghanistan.
Read: One arrested for making threat call to Air India city office
According to some reports, the alert may have indicated possible threats from Pakistan-based groups like the Lashkar, and other groups like the Taliban as well as the new terror group ISIS that has wreaked much havoc in the past one year in both Iraq and Syria.
Deployment of more skymarshals on these flights is reportedly being strongly considered.
Security agencies are also reportedly carrying out ladder-point checks which are conducted just before the passengers embark onto the aircraft apart from the earlier rigorous security checks of both passengers and their baggage at airport terminals.
Security has also been beefed up at airport perimeters and car-parking enclosures within the airport complex.
The hijack alert comes soon after a suspicious fishing boat from Pakistan with four suspected terrorists on board was chased and intercepted by the Coast Guard on the high seas 365 km from the coastal Gujarat town of Porbandar on the night of December 31 following which the occupants of the boat had set it on fire, triggering an explosion in which they are believed to have perished.