Birju Salla, business-class traveller who landed in jail for hijack letter

Salla is the first person to be booked and convicted under the Anti Hijacking Act 2016

In the end it was the easiest of cases to crack for the National Investigation Agency (NIA). The accused Birju Kishor Salla (37), scion of a family of jewellers from Mumbai, had already confessed to planting a hijack threat in the toilet of a Jet Airways Mumbai-Delhi flight to the police. The A4 size paper on which the threat was printed matched papers lying in Salla’s office. The ink with which it was printed matched the ink of his office printer. Salla’s laptop revealed that hijack threat was printed on his office printer. His Google cache showed he had used the translator service to translate it to Urdu.

Now Salla has a series of inglorious firsts to his name. He is the first ever person to be put on India’s "no fly list" introduced by the Modi government in 2017. He also becomes the first person to be booked and convicted under the Anti Hijacking Act 2016. Salla was convicted by an NIA court in Mumbai and sentenced to life. He was found guilty under Section 3 of the Anti Hijacking Act. Anyone found guilty under this provision could be sentenced to death or life imprisonment with a fine and confiscation of their properties. Salla has been spared the gallows or confiscation of property. He has been fined Rs 5 crore, which would be distributed to his victims in proportion to the “misery undergone.” The two pilots get Rs 1 lakh each, the cabin crew get Rs 50,000 each while every passenger gets Rs 25,000.

This is how a series of events unfolded in the wee hours of October 30, 2017 which put India on high alert and terrorised the flight’s 174 passengers. Boarding for the flight, scheduled to depart from Mumbai at 2:55 a m, started at 2:15 a m. Salla, a commercially important passenger (CIP) in Jet Airways' records for his frequent flying, was assigned seat 1-D in business class. Being a CIP, Salla was escorted by two staffers to his seat. While the boarding process was on, Salla called Shivani Malhotra, a member of the cabin crew, and asked for a blanket. When Malhotra went to fetch it, Salla went to the toilet where he remained for five minutes. Malhotra left the blanket on the vacant seat.  It was at this time that Salla planted the hijack note in the tissue box. Upon returning to his seat, Salla asked Nikita Joneja, the flight’s cabin crew supervisor, for another blanket.  After Joneja handed him the blanket, Salla dozed off. After a while Malhotra went to the toilet and realised the tissue papers couldn't be pulled from the tissue box. She informed Joneja who handed her a fresh box of tissue paper. When Malhotra went to replace the tissues she found a folded piece of paper in the box printed that read, “Flight 9W 339 is covered with hijackers and aircraft should be flown straight to PoK. If you put landing gear you will hear the noise of people dying. Cargo area contains bomb and will blast if you land in Delhi. Allah is great.”

Malhotra handed the note to Joneja who in turn brought it to the notice of the flight’s captain, Jay Jariwala. Per Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), Jariwala landed at Ahmedabad where crime branch personnel were waiting. During enquiries, Salla admitted to having placed the note and was taken into custody. A week later, the NIA took over the case and booked Salla under the new law. Salla told investigators that he planned the hoax to shut down Jet Airways' Delhi operations, which would have allowed his female friend working in the airline’s Delhi office to move with him to Mumbai.

Salla comes from a reputed family of jewelers who run H Kishorkumar Jewellers in Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazaar area. Established in 1993 by his father Kishor Kumar, the family’s shop is located around 200 meters from the site of the bomb blast at Zaveri Bazaar in 2011. 

Salla, a married man with two children, is also involved in real estate. Company records show Salla associated with a real estate company registered as a limited liability partnership (LLP) with three other partners with their registered office in Thane. While reports suggest the jewellery showroom at Zaveri Bazaar closed after the hijacking episode in 2017, Salla’s income hasn’t dwindled. He told a court last year that his annual income was Rs 5 million and he was a regular income tax payee. While Salla’s family fortune may keep his children going, the high flying business class traveler finds himself grounded in jail for the rest of his life.