All the personnel and security officials dna spoke to did so on the condition of anonymity.
The security agencies managing civil aviation in India are of the view that though there are no chances of an Egypt Air-like hijacking situation in India, nothing, nonetheless, can be ruled out.
All the personnel and security officials dna spoke to did so on the condition of anonymity.
A domestic Egypt Air flight, MS181, was hijacked and forcefully diverted to Larnaca airport in Cyprus after taking off from Borg El Arab airport on Tuesday. The hijacker told the passengers and crew members that he is wearing a suicide belt laden with explosives. He later surrendered himself to government authorities after sustained negotiations.
A high-ranking official of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which is tasked with airport security, said that the issue of security is like a cat-and-mouse game. "However, if something like 9/11 is possible in the US, which had till then boasted about its foolproof security, then anything is possible," he added.
Another senior officer from the Airports Authority of India (AAI), which manages most of the civil aviation airports in India, said that the security hold area at airports in well-equipped to detect any kind of explosives. "Anybody carrying any kind of explosives will definitely get caught," he said.
However, contradicting this, aviation expert Vipul Saxena claims that the screening machines at Indian airports are not foolproof. "There is a chance that if someone packs the explosives in thick-layered black colour sheets, then these may go undetected in a rare case, which worries me," Saxena said. The logic behind this, he added, is that the screening rays of the scanners do not clearly reflect back the thick black colour packing.
India has had a handful of past incidents of planes being hijacked, the most infamous one being Indian Airlines flight IC 814, which was hijacked en route to Delhi from Nepal in December 1999 by alleged members of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, a Pakistan-based extremist outfit. About 176 passenges and 15 crew members had been on board. The hijackers had sought the release of three terrorists, a demand that the then Indian government was forced to concede to.
Most of the officials dna spoke to are of the opinion that the security at Indian airports is second to none and is adapted to local conditions, though the porousness of perimeter walls surrounding the airports is a serious concern. Through several reports in the past, dna had highlighted how the Mumbai airport is a sitting duck for terror attacks due to several loopholes in its security.
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