Flight operations at the Delhi airport remained largely normal during the day after a scare caused by the firing of gunshots last night. “All steps were taken to normalise the situation and ensure smooth functioning of the airport. But the incident has not hampered the operations of the airport,” an official statement from the ministry of civil aviation said.
The incident of gunshots was reported to the CISF personnel deployed at terminal-2 of the airport at around 1 am last night. According to eyewitnesses who spoke to Business Standard, this led to repeated frisking and baggage checking of passengers including those who had been checked in already.
“It is believed that the miscreants came in a Qualis vehicle. Our men tried to chase the car for about a kilometre but they fled,” said a CISF official. The fiasco led to a delay of two-and-a-half hours for 10-15 international flights, including a British Airways, a KLM and a Swiss Air flight, sources said.
“The CISF as per its standard operating procedure took all necessary steps and measures to check and verify the genuineness of this incident. Nothing suspicious has been found. The inquiry into the incident is going on to ascertain if at all there is a miss. Delhi Police is also investigating whether any suspicious vehicle did exist as what was reported,” the ministry statement said.
Meanwhile, security has been beefed up considerably at the airport during the last week.
“This include increasing the security personnel by at least 20-25 per cent. There are checks happening at the entry gate when the vehicles enter the vicinity of the airport. The number of CCTVs have already been increased, while more such are being installed by DIAL,” said a security official at the airport.
The official, however, mentioned that identity cards of officials are only checked at random and according to profiling. And unlike international passengers, not every domestic passenger, even between the age group of 16-40, are checked for their identity cards by the security officials.
Meanwhile, travel agents saw some cancellations in their ticket sales today, though there was no major impact.
“We have been getting calls from customers to cancel tickets for flights in and out of Delhi,” said Tarun Yadav, a Delhi-based travel agent.
