Bomb scare at Thiruvananthapuram airport hatched by securitymen?

Who played mischief at Thiruvananthapuram airport? The jury may still be out but security circles have concluded that the packet containing locally available chemicals was deliberately planted on the Kingfisher aircraft after it landed in Kerala on Sunday morning.

The detection of the packet led to a security scare, but inputs from various agencies suggest this may not have been possible without ‘official’ sanction. While the packet was probably planted by ground handling staff, sources are beginning to see a pattern in terror-related developments in Kerala, and many within the security establishment are pointing a finger of suspicion at their own agencies.

One official said state police has been kicking up “terror hysteria” “without much basis” for some time now. Much of it has led to publicly visible security actions, like the terror alert for Kochi.
The motives behind false alerts include attempt to improve preparedness or increasing financial allocation for the agency involved.

Sources are ruling out a terror angle to the incident. Here’s why: it was just 50 gm of gun powder with a string, draped in a class X question paper and a local newspaper; it was detected after passengers and luggage had left the aircraft during a “routine” check; it was packed deliberately to be detected; it was not a bomb, and there was no detonator to trigger it. “It couldn’t have been the work of a terror group,” says an official.

While there is a possibility that some ground-handling staff may have been behind it, terrorism watchers argue that “if that was case they would have planted an explosive”, not this packet.
This leads officials to believe that the packet couldn’t have been planted without an okay from security personnel.