29 October,2024 09:10 PM IST | Mumbai | Prasun Choudhari
Representational Pic/File
Air India, Vistara and IndiGo were among over 100 flights to get threats as the Indian airlines continued to receive bomb threats on Tuesday, official sources said.
In a span of 16 days, over 510 domestic and international flights have got the threats in a wave of bomb threats to Indian airlines, mostly through social media platforms, that later turned out to be hoaxes.
According to sources, Air India received threats for around 36 flights, Vistara received 35 threats and IndiGo airlines received threats to its 32 flights.
Different Indian airlines on October 28 also received bomb threats, following which security was ramped up at multiple airports.
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Sources said that around 60 Indian airlines on Monday received bomb threats. These included-- IndiGo 21, Air India 20 and Vistara 20.
Meanwhile, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) has been roped in to investigate the series of bomb threats received by Indian airlines in the past 15 days. In the past 15 days, Indian airlines have received as many as 463 bomb threats, causing major disruptions to schedules of many flights. On Monday, 61 fresh bomb threats were received.
The threats, directed at multiple carriers, have caused widespread concern and heightened security measures across the nation's airports. Amid a rise in hoax bomb threats received by airlines, Union Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu said in a media address that the government is taking steps to ban perpetrators who resort to hoax bomb threats from flying.
"We will take the support of international agencies, law enforcement wings, and IB," he said.
The minister said that the Centre is also mulling an amendment to two civil aviation laws. A source from the IB confirmed the development and also disclosed, "We were keeping an eye for the bomb threats from day 1. The only issue we are facing is the use of virtual private networks (VPN) and dark web, making the perpetrators untraceable."
