Revenge, perhaps, can't be more creative than this. But Manoj Bansal didn't have the last laugh. Instead, he ended up in the custody of airport police.
The flight was at 3.20 pm, but the flier chose to arrive at the airport at 4 pm. Having missed the plane, he asked for a refund, but was told that he wouldn't get any as he had bought a non-refundable ticket. Thoroughly miffed with the airlines for no fault of theirs, he made a bomb hoax call.
Revenge, perhaps, can't be more creative than this. But Manoj Bansal, 26, didn't have the last laugh. Instead, he ended up in the custody of airport police.
Bansal, a resident of Jaipur, was to take the Mumbai-Jaipur Air India flight (IC 611) on Wednesday. The departure time was 3.20 pm, but Bansal arrived at Terminal 1A of the domestic airport in Santa Cruz at 4 pm. He was told at the AI counter that the plane had long left. "It's the norm in the domestic sector to arrive 45 minutes before a flight departs. Bansal came to the airport 40 minutes late," said an AI official.
That, however, did not stop Bansal from asking for a refund. "He had bought a non-refundable ticket, and we told him that he was not entitled to get his money back," said the AI official.
Fuming, Bansal left the airport terminal. From a phone booth just outside the terminal, he called up the AI call centre in New Delhi and said that a bomb had been planted in the plane bound for Jaipur. Instantly, the call centre office faxed the number to AI's office at the airport. Dialling it, officials found that the call had originated from a booth outside the terminal building.
It all happened so fast that Bansal didn't get time to escape. The AI security guards apprehended him and handed him over to airport police. "We have arrested him under section 507(criminal intimidation by anonymous communication) of the Indian Penal Code. He will be produced at the Andheri Metropolitan court on Thursday," said a senior officer of the airport police station.
The spokesperson for AI confirmed the news. "Our call centre received the call after the aircraft was airborne with 91 passengers on board. The plane landed safely in Jaipur and a proper security drill was carried out," he said. "Our guards have already apprehended the caller and handed him over to the police."
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