The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) is likely to propose action against hoax callers, including a five-year ban from flying on any airline. The development comes as forty-one airports, including in Varanasi, Chennai, Patna, Coimbatore, and Jaipur, received bomb threat emails on Tuesday, prompting authorities to scramble contingency measures and carry out anti-sabotage checks that lasted hours. Each email was later found to be a hoax.
Sources told news agency PTI that an online group “KNR” was suspected to be behind these hoax threat emails. The group reportedly issued similar emails to several schools in the Delhi-National Capital Region on May 1.
The emails received by the airports carried almost the identical message, “Hello, there are explosives hidden in the Airport. The bombs will soon explode. You will all die.” The airports put into action contingency plans and carried out anti-sabotage checks following recommendations of their respective Bomb Threat Assessment Committees, the sources said. At the Chennai airport, a Dubai-bound flight with 286 passengers was delayed as a result of the hoax threat.
