Ahmedabad: The man who was arrested on charges of threatening to hijack a Mumbai-Delhi Jet Airways plane has purportedly confessed he did it to make a stewardess, whom he had a crush on, lose her job.
The Gujarat-based jeweller planted a hijack threat letter inside one of the toilets of a Mumbai-Delhi flight and intended to put many more of these letters in the flight.
The accused, Birju Kishore Salla has been taken to Mumbai by the Ahmedabad Crime Branch for further investigation. The case has been handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
The crime branch have registered an offence under Section 4(b) of the Anti-Hijacking Act, 2016, which warrants life imprisonment till death and complete forfeiture of all movable and immovable assets of the person.
Flight 9W 339, with 115 passengers and seven crew members, landed without at the Ahmedabad airport on Monday and everyone "deplaned" safely after the scare.
The Ahmedabad Crime Branch detained two persons on Monday and later arrested Salla.
Salla had allegedly used Google translator to write the threat letter in Urdu and wanted to plant several such letters to shut down the airline and make the concerned air hostess lose her job.
However, the arrested businessman never expected the letter to be discovered mid-air, which landed him in trouble.
According to sources, Salla also had issues with the airline over food and was already bearing a grudge. He left the note as an act of 'revenge'.
Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju on Monday advised all airlines to put the accused on their no-fly lists and said a statutory criminal action would also be initiated.
The threat note, accessed by CNN-News18, said: “Flight must not land, flight will be flown to PoK. If you put landing gear, you will hear people dying."
The message was passed on to the pilot, who is believed to have pressed the hijack alert button, following which the plane made an emergency landing.
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