New Delhi: Indian aviation is going through serious turbulence. In about two weeks, more than 510 domestic and international flights have been hit by hoax bomb threats, causing delays, emergency landings, soaring costs for airlines, and panic in the skies. Indian carriers such as Air India, IndiGo, SpiceJet, and Vistara have taken the brunt, with a peak on Tuesday, when over 100 flights were targeted.
This unprecedented wave of bomb scares for flights is already more than four times the 120 recorded over three years from 2014 to 2017, the last period for which official data is available.
That’s why these hoax threats on flights are ThePrint’s Newsmaker of the Week.
Since the threats started in mid-October, the government and law enforcement agencies have been working urgently to identify the perpetrators and to stop further incidents. Despite various leads, a few arrests, and suspicions of Sikh radicals being involved, they have yet to find conclusive answers.
In the meantime, airlines are following strict protocols to handle such threats.
An airline source said that when a bomb threat is reported, it is immediately relayed to designated security agencies as well as the airline’s security team. Following protocol, the aircraft in question is directed to an isolation bay, where security officials take over.
“Passengers and crew are evacuated, after which the aircraft undergoes a thorough inspection by their (security agency) teams. These checks are conducted on the aircraft, luggage, and cargo to ensure complete safety,” the source added.
Pranks or a conspiracy?
Just days after the threats started, central intelligence agencies traced some of them to IP addresses in London and Germany. A few arrests have been made, too.
On 16 October, Mumbai Police detained a 17-year-old school dropout from Chhattisgarh who allegedly issued threats to four flights on 14 October to frame a friend over a money dispute. Last week, a 25-year-old unemployed man from Delhi was also arrested for making similar threats. Delhi Police officials claimed the man admitted to making the threats just to draw attention to himself.
Then this week, Nagpur Police claimed they’ve identified another suspect—35-year-old Jagdish Uikey, an author of a book on terrorism. Alleged to be responsible for multiple threats, Uikey was detained from Gondia Wednesday.
This situation has garnered a lot of global coverage too. The Guardian called it an “unprecedented surge in fake bomb threats”. It also highlighted that Indian aviation authorities and investigators have yet to uncover the source and motives behind the threats, many of which were sent via email or posted anonymously on social media platforms like X.
“The impact on India’s airline industry has been enormous. Regulations enforce airlines to act on every threat, meaning dozens of planes have had to reroute and make emergency land,” it noted.
CNN too took note of the persistence of this “epidemic of hoax threats”— “despite authorities stepping up security measures, threatening legal punishments, appeasing airlines, and reassuring panicked passengers.”
But there are also suspicions about a greater conspiracy at play.
India has now approached the FBI and Interpol to help track down the perpetrators. Indian officials are reportedly pursuing any leads that might connect the calls to Sikh radical groups in the US.
In a broadcast last week, Sikhs for Justice chief Gurpatwant Singh Pannun—a designated terrorist who is wanted in India for multiple cases—had called for a “boycott” of Air India from 1 to 19 November to “destroy India economically”.
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What’s being done?
The fake threats have spurred the government into action. Union Minister for Civil Aviation Ram Mohan Naidu has said that law enforcement agencies are actively pursuing all cases of bomb threats against airlines, with the government closely monitoring the situation. The government is also exploring stricter norms, including putting offenders on a no-fly list.
The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) has issued new guidelines for civil aviation security in response to “evolving security challenges”, especially the “emerging trend” of hoax bomb threats circulating on social media. Under the updated guidelines, several factors will now be considered when assessing the seriousness of a bomb threat, including the anonymous or pseudonymous nature of the social media account, the geopolitical context, and the presence of VIPs on board.
In India, the BCAS and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) are responsible for aviation safety and set standards for civil flight security. However, as the CNN report noted, the current protocols are based on outdated laws. The report quoted aviation expert Sanjay Lazar, who said that under a 1982 law, last amended in 2010, “every threat has to be taken into consideration”— even though the law does not account for modern challenges like social media, that complicate the task.
While it’s important to identify the culprits sending out hoax threats, the updated BCAS rules for identifying serious threats may help reduce the number of delays and diversions to flights.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has also stepped into gear, issuing an advisory to social media platforms to curb the spread of these hoaxes. MeitY has urged social platforms to exercise strict due diligence, remove hoaxes promptly, and cooperate with authorities—or risk losing their immunity for third-party content.
“[T]he exemption from liability for any third party information, data, or communication link made available or hosted by social media intermediaries as provided under section 79 of the IT Act shall not apply if such intermediaries do not follow the due diligence obligations as prescribed under the IT Act read with IT Rules, 2021 or abetted or aided, in the commission of the unlawful act,” the advisory read.
The advisory added that these hoax bomb threats, which impact a large number of citizens, pose a risk to the country’s economic security. It also warned that the rapid spread of such misinformation has been dangerously amplified by social media features like forwarding, re-sharing, and re-posting.
“Such hoax bomb threats are mostly misinformation that is massively disrupting the public order, operations of airlines and security of the airline travellers,” it said.
After all, even if the threats are fake, the fallout for India’s aviation sector and passengers is all too real.
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(Edited by Asavari Singh)