Star crossed Indian businessman gets life in jail for airplane hijack hoax

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A National Investigation Agency court in Ahmedabad on Tuesday jailed a Mumbai-based businessman for life and fined him Rs 5 crore ($720,000) for a mid-flight hijack hoax in October 2017 in the first conviction under the amended anti-hijack law.

Businessman Birju Kishor Salla was accused of triggering a mid-flight scare on a Delhi-bound Jet Airways flight (No. 9W339) from Mumbai by leaving a hijack threat note written in English and Urdu in the aircraft’s toilet.

The note had asked the plane to be flown to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. It was diverted to Ahmedabad where it made an emergency landing. All the 116 passengers were made to disembark at Ahmedabad airport and screened.

The NIA had taken up the case and a probe revealed that Salla was having an affair with a Jet Airways employee. “He confessed to the crime and told investigators he had done it in the hope that it would force Jet Airways to close its Delhi operations and his girlfriend, who worked in the airline’s Delhi office, would come back to Mumbai,” an NIA official said.

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