British Airways Trainee Arrested For Hoax Bomb Call To SpiceJet Flight

A trainee ticketing agent of British Airways has been arrested for a hoax bomb call to a SpiceJet flight yesterday. After receiving the call yesterday, the airlines halted the departure and conducted a thorough search.

But authorities did not find anything suspicious on the plane.

"Security officials thoroughly inspected it and did not find anything suspicious. The call was later declared as a hoax," a SpiceJet spokesperson said.

Delhi Police had constituted a special team to trace the caller. The call was traced back to Abhinav Prakash, a 24-year-old trainee at the British Airways ticketing counter.

After arrest, Prakash revealed that he made the call so that his friends could spend some time with his girlfriends, who were flying to Pune.

During questioning, the accused disclosed that his childhood friends Rakesh and Kunal Sehrawat, met two girls during their recent trip to Manali. Both the girls were to leave for Pune on the SpiceJet flight.

"His friends told him that they wanted to spend some more time with their girlfriends and instigated the accused to think of some way of delaying the flight. The three then conspired to make a fake bomb call to the call center of SpiceJet Airlines," police said.

The Delhi-Pune SpiceJet was scheduled to depart from the IGI Airport at 6.30 pm yesterday. Minutes before takeoff, a call was received at the SpiceJet reservation office about a bomb in the aircraft.

At that time, boarding of passengers for the flight had not started, an airline spokesperson said in a statement on Friday.

Following the call, the aircraft was moved to an isolation bay and was thoroughly inspected by security officials.