Chhattisgarh: IB Officer Behind False Bomb Alert on Flight, Say Police

Raipur: A passenger on the November 14 Nagpur-Kolkata flight who raised a false alarm about a bomb in the aircraft, leading to its emergency landing at Raipur airport, was an officer of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), police said on Tuesday.

Confirming to Deccan Chronicle that the passenger, Animesh Mandal, was an IB officer, Santosh Singh, senior superintendent of police, Raipur district, said: “Mandal was interrogated by a joint team of police and the IB officials before his arrest. He cooked up the bomb story,”

Police said that Mandal, 44, was interrogated before his arrest and it was found that he was an IB officer.

Mandal, one of the 193 passengers on board the plane, had alerted the crew about a bomb. Following its emergency landing at the Raipur airport, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), the bomb detection and disposal squad and Chhattisgarh police entered the plane and evacuated the passengers.

They later searched the plane and found that there was no bomb. Mandal, a resident of Nagpur, was arrested under section 351(4) (criminal intimidation by an anonymous communication, or having taken the precaution to conceal the name or abode of the person from whom the threat comes) of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the provisions of the Suppression of the Unlawful Acts Against Safety of Civil Aviation Act, 1982. He was subsequently sent to judicial custody.