Two flights bound for Nepal and Bhubaneswar were today grounded for a few hours and 340 people on board were evacuated following a bomb threat call received at Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) here but they turned out to be hoax.
"An all clear was given to both the flights after about four hours of conducting anti-sabotage checks. The bomb call turned out to be hoax," a senior airport security official said in the evening.
Officials at the airport said while the Air India flight to Bhubaneswar took off at 5:20 PM, Royal Nepal Airlines' Kathmandu-bound flight was waiting for "operational" clearance. There were also reports that four Members of Parliament were booked on the AI flight.
The threat was triggered after the airport control room received a call at about 10 AM from a person identifying himself as Abhishek Singh and that he was a "CBI officer". He is reported to have said there is a "time bomb" in the Nepal bound flight (RA-206) and that some "movement" was happening at the terminal area to strike the Delhi-Bhubaneswar flight (AI-705).
Soon after the call was received, passengers on board the two aircraft were evacuated and taken to the isolation bay where security agencies carried out anti-sabotage checks.
While the Kathmandu flight had 155 passengers and nine crew members, the flight bound for Odisha's capital had 169 fliers and seven crew members.
Passengers of both the flights and their baggage were subjected to a second round of checking with the Bomb Threat Assessment Committee (BTAC) at the IGIA monitoring the situation.
Security personnel from the CISF and Delhi Police had cordoned off the two planes along with bomb disposal squads, the officials said.
They added police is trying to track the number, location and person who made the hoax call to the airport call centre.
Talking about the menace of hoax calls, Central Industrial Security Force chief Surender Singh had said while 44 such calls were received last year at various airports where the force is deployed, 16 such calls have been made till early March this year.
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Officials said the hoax call was made from a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) facility by using multiple Internet Protocol addresses and hence sleuths were finding it difficult to probe its exact origin.
