Man arrested over hoax call to airport

Mumbai: The Sahar police on Saturday arrested a 28-year-old Goregaon resident for allegedly making the hoax call. The police said that the accused, Wasim Qureshi, is married to a Phillipines native, who had left home in a huff after a domestic tiff.

“She was on her way home to stay with her parents, and Qureshi wanted to delay the flight so that he could try and talk her out of leaving him,” said senior police inspector Lata Shirsat, Sahar police.

Officers said that after the FIR was registered, they obtained the registration details of the cell phone number with which the call was made, and traced Qureshi based on the details.

Qureshi has been charged with criminal intimidation and public mischief under the Indian Penal Code and will be produced in court on Sunday.

Following a bomb threat, passengers of a Singapore Airlines flight were stranded at the Mumbai airport for over eight hours overnight. Flight SQ423, an Airbus 380, scheduled for 11.40 pm departure on Friday night departed at 7.49 am on Saturday.

Officials said that a phone call about a bomb on the aircraft was made to the Air India call centre in Thane and that the information was passed on to the authorities. After a complete sanitation operation by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) team, it was eventually declared a hoax.