Telangana: Travel agent nabbed for false hijack alert

Hyderabad: This must surely be the most bizarre reason for anyone to mail a false hijack alert. Hyderabad-based techie Motaparthi Vamshi Krishna sent a mail last Saturday to the Mumbai Police Commissioner warning that a gang was planning to hijack flights from Hyderabad, Mumbai and Chennai airports. The mail created panic until Hyderabad police arrested the suspect on Thursday. Vamshi had sent the mail claiming to be a woman.

Police said that Vamshi Krishna, a travel agent, had sent the mail to avoid a trip with his Chennai-based girlfriend to Mumbai and Goa as he had no money. Commissioner’s task force DCP B. Limba Reddy said that Vamshi who had completed graduation in computers hailed from West Godavari district. Vamshi recently met a Chennai-based girl on Facebook. Claiming to be a businessman he developed friendship with her. A few days ago his girlfriend proposed a vacation to Mumbai and Goa and asked him to book flight tickets. However, due to financial problems, he requested her to cancel the tour. But she refused.

With no option left he made a plan to cancel the trip by making her believe that all flights have been cancelled due to an alert across the country. “He initially created a fake air ticket for his friend, but later thought that she would dump him if she identified it. To avoid this he created a fake email ID and sent a mail to the Mumbai police commissioner, identifying himself as a woman from Hydera-bad,” Mr Limba Reddy said.

In the mail, he said that ‘she’ had overheard six persons talking about hijacks and that the 23-member gang would split into three. ‘She’ also requested not to reveal her name. Mumbai police directed the mail to Hyderabad police and teams were set up to trace the mail. Using the IP address the mail was traced to ‘E Net Zone,’ a cyber cafe in Madhuranagar.

Police identified eight suspects but could not zero in on any individual. The absence of CCTV cameras in the cyber cafe added to the problem. However, after analysing CCTV cameras in a nearby cyber cafe, police traced the suspect. Police said that Vamshi Krishna was earlier arrested in an extortion case and a cheating case in the city. Police found that his Chennai girlfriend had just completed post graduation and had been in touch with him since three months. Vamshi was in touch with six other women on FB claiming to be a high flyer.