Government to deploy more marshals in flights for passenger safety

: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Wednesday sought a report from the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MCA) on multiple bomb threats to various airlines operating on domestic as well as international routes for the last couple of days.

The MHA has also decided to increase the number of marshals deployed in flights to cover sensitive routes in the domestic and even on the international circuits.

It is learnt that the MHA has asked besides the MCA, Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Bureau of Civil Aviation, National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Intelligence Bureau (IB) to submit report on at least 13 bomb threats received by airlines in last 48 hours.

So far, all of the bomb threats have been found to be hoax but the officials are not taking it lightly since there is a pattern to such attempts of creating disturbance at infrastructure used by large of mass of people.

Sources said that government is seeking inquiry to ascertain people behind emailing of threat letters which is intended to damage reputation of the Indian aviation market which is growing and is the third largest globally.

The cyber units of the government have also been alerted to carry out an audit to trace footprints of the emails which appear to have been masked and originated from abroad, sources suspected. The accounts were shut down after they come to notice, sources stated.

On Wednesday two airlines were diverted for security clearance after they got mails threatening to blow them off.

One of them was Akasa Air’s Delhi-Bengaluru flight. “Akasa Air Flight QP 1335, flying from Delhi to Bengaluru on October 16, 2024 and carrying 174 passengers, 3 infants and 7 crew members on board received a security alter,” confirmed a spokesperson of the airlines.

The Akasa Air Emergency Response teams advised the pilot to divert the flight to Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi with abundant precaution. The airlines will continue to monitor the situation and assist authorities for the safety and comfort of passengers, the spokesperson added.

The other aircraft was of Indigo which took off from Mumbai and was bound for Delhi but was redirected to Ahemdabad due to security alert, an airline spokesperson stated. All the passengers safely embarked at Ahemdabad airport.

Air Marshals

The government has decided to increase number of air marshals, who are NSG commandoes in plain clothes, to deploy them on some domestic and international routes considered sensitive owing to intelligence inputs following increased global conflicts and tensions with India.

The strength of air marshals have been doubled to cover wider network of airlines on routes mapped vulnerable, sources stated.

The idea of deploying air marshals, drawn from the NSG’s highly specialised anti-hijacking unit, came after the Indian Airlines IC-814 hijacking in 1999.

Of late, deployment of air marshals was reduced owing to reduced threat perception but now the security scenario has changed.

Last November, designated terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the founder of the proscribed Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), had cautioned Sikhs through a video post not to fly in Air India aircraft as their lives could be under threat. The relations between India and Canada, home to large number of Sikhs, have nose dived due to killing of Khalistani hardliner Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Since May this year, a series of threats were issued to schools followed by hospitals. In the investigation, it was found that Russian domains were used to mail the threat letters but that might have been a false alarm given layers of masking normally used to hide the origin of culprits, officials suspected.