The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has registered a case under the stringent Anti-Hijacking Act against a 28-year-old man who allegedly made a hoax call to the Delhi airport in August to stop his wife from leaving the country for work, claiming she was a suicide bomber.
This is the second such case to be investigated by the NIA under the Anti-Hijacking Act, 2016, that prescribes life imprisonment for making false calls of bomb threats.
The accused, Nasrudeen, hailing from Bihar’s Sitamarhi and a resident of Chennai, had been arrested from Delhi. On August 8, at 9 p.m., a call was received at the Delhi International Airport Limited’s call centre in Gurugram that a woman named Zabina had reached the airport and could cause a blast on a Dubai or Saudi Arabia-bound flight. On investigation, it was found out to be a hoax and Nasrudeen was arrested the next day.
In June, a special NIA court in Ahmedabad sentenced a businessman to life term and imposed a fine of ₹5 crore for placing a hoax hijack note on a Jet Airways plane in October 2017.
This was the first case investigated by the NIA under the Act after it came into force in 2017. The Act had replaced the 1982 Act.
The businessman, Birju Kishore Salla, said he committed the crime to force Jet to shut its Delhi operation, which would eventually lead his girlfriend, who worked in the airline’s Delhi office, to come to Mumbai.
