Hijack hoax on Jet aircraft: Mumbai businessman gets lifer, fined Rs 5 cr
Ahmedabad, Jun 11 (UNI) In the first ever case and punishment under the stricter and amended Anti-Hijacking Act, 2016 in India, a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court here on Tuesday awarded life term to a Mumbai-based businessman, who had on October 30, 2017, put a fake threat letter in the washroom of a Jet Airways flight, saying that it should be taken to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, as there were hijackers and explosives in the aircraft.
Special NIA court Judge M K Dave also imposed a fine of Rs five crore on Birju K Salla and ordered that Rs one lakh each should be given to the pilot and co-pilot, Rs 50,000 each to the air hostesses and Rs 25,000 each to the passengers, who were on board, at the time of the incident.
The Mumbai-Delhi flight, carrying 115 passengers and seven crew members, including Salla, later made an emergency landing in Ahmedabad.
Salla was traveling in the business class and was arrested. He later confessed that he had done so, with the hope of getting back his ex-girl friend, who was an employee of the airways.
He had thought that if his plan worked, the services of the airways would be terminated and his girl friend would be compelled to come back to Mumbai, where he was doing jewellery business.
According to the charge sheet filed in the case in January this year, ''Salla had typed out the threat letter on his laptop at his Mumbai office the same morning of his flight and had got a print of it from the office printer, which he later put in the tissue paper box in the plane's toilet.
A message in Urdu scribbled on the note was an exact translation of this English text by using Google Translator. Salla, in the letter, had written that there were 12 hijackers on board. The flight should be taken directly to PoK.
''If you put landing gear, you will hear the noise of people dying,'' he had warned the flight crew. The note ended with words ''Allahoo Akbar (Allah is great).''
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