Passenger claims bomb on IndiGo flight, held after nothing suspicious found

An IndiGo flight from Nagpur to Kolkata with 187 passengers on board was forced to make an emergency landing at the Raipur airport on Thursday morning after one of the passengers told the crew there was a "bomb" on the aircraft, officials said.  After landing at the airport in Chhattisgarh, the aeroplane was thoroughly checked by security personnel, but nothing suspicious was found. The passenger who gave false information about the presence of a "bomb" on the aircraft was later arrested, they said.  The flight 6E-812, with 187 passengers and six crew members on board, landed at the Swami Vivekananda Airport in Raipur sometime after 9 am following the passenger's claim, said Raipur Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Santosh Singh. As per preliminary information, a passenger, identified as Animesh Mandal, told aircraft crew members about the presence of a "bomb" in the flight when it was mid-air, he said.  The Air Traffic Control was immediately informed and the flight was diverted to Raipur. Upon landing, the aircraft was immediately taken to the isolation bay for mandatory security checks, the police official said.  A police team along with a bomb detection and disposal squad reached the airport. All passengers were deboarded and the aircraft and luggage in it were thoroughly checked by Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and Raipur police personnel, he said. After a thorough inspection, the claim about the presence of a bomb was found to be false, Singh said.  Mandal, a resident of Nagpur, was questioned by the Raipur police and later placed under arrest, said the SSP without elaborating on the motive behind the claim. The accused was booked under section 351 (4) (the offence of criminal intimidation by an anonymous communication, or having taken precaution to conceal the name or abode of the person from whom the threat comes) and provisions of the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against Safety of Civil Aviation Act, 1982, he said, adding further investigation was underway.  The flight departed for Kolkata at around 12 noon, airport officials said. On October 24, a bomb threat was issued to an Alliance Air flight from Kolkata to Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh) following which the aircraft was checked at the Bilaspur airport, but nothing suspicious was found.