With a week-and-a-half to go before Diwali, the festival of lights, the frenzy of recent bomb hoaxes has left the authorities flummoxed with the sheer scale. As a result, there is 10 per cent more security enhancement at airports across the country.
It has left many in the security establishment wondering if the hoax calls are a prelude to something more sinister during the Diwali celebrations with the intent of tiring out the security establishment.
On Monday, Union Civil Aviation Minister Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu said that the act of making hoax calls to airlines may soon be made a cognizable offence even as the government is trying to make amendments to the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against Safety of Civil Aviation (SUASCA) Act, 1982 so that those caught for making hoax bomb calls to airlines will be put on a no-fly list besides imposition of due penalties.
“If you look at the last week, eight flights have been diverted. Each threat is assessed individually and our response has been efficient and dynamic. We are also not compromising on safety and security. Even though most of them are hoax threats, we cannot take them lightly. The lives of passengers are important, the security situation is important and protocol is important. We have enhanced security at airports,” the minister said.
Providing for imprisonment for life and fines for those who commit certain acts, SUASCA Act, 1982, criminalises acts that endanger the safety of civil aviation like destroying or damaging air navigation facilities, committing violence against a person on board an aircraft, placing a device or substance on an aircraft that could endanger its safety, communicating false information that could endanger an aircraft's safety, committing an act of violence at an airport, etc.
India’s civil aviation is no stranger to bomb hoaxes. Rather it has been a phenomenon that has reared its terrifying head with regularity particularly before festivals. What is new in the latest flurry of bomb hoax calls the past week are the numbers. Till Sunday, the numbers of such calls are headed north to touch the century mark.
These calls, which have turned out to be hoaxes, have mostly emanated from unverified social media accounts
With the threats received on Sunday, the number of bomb hoaxes received by Indian airlines this week crossed at least 90. These social media accounts appear to have been created only recently, which is usually the case with social media accounts used to issue fake threats.
But in the meantime, they have managed to play havoc with the flight schedules with many flights being delayed even as the security bandobast works overtime, not to speak of passenger discomfort.
