Mumbai: Jeweller Salla Birju (38), who had allegedly planted a note in the toilet of a Mumbai-Delhi Jet Airways flight on Monday about a non-existent hijack and a bomb, has been arrested under the stringent Anti-Hijacking Act by the Ahmedabad police. This is the first arrest under the act which came into force in July 2017, replacing the 1982 vintage law, according to which an accused can face a maximum punishment of life imprisonment till death and his properties can be confiscated, the police said.
The Ahmedabad police confirmed on Tuesday that Birju was romantically involved with one of airhostesses and had played a prank to make her quit the airline company and join him in Mumbai. Birju, a jeweller from Gujarat’s Amreli, now based in Mumbai, was allegedly dating the airhostess. He was detained by the Ahmedabad police and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has been kept in the loop about it. If the Centre wants, the case may be handed over to the NIA, the officer said.
A note found in a washroom aboard a Mumbai–Delhi Jet Airways flight, stated that the aircraft had been hijacked and asked it to be flown to Pak-Occupied Kashmir or else bombs would go off, led to the flight being diverted to Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhai Patel International Airport early on Monday.
One of the airhostesses on flight discovered the threat note, which was written English and Urdu, at around 3.30 am, 35 minutes after the flight took off from Mumbai.
