Chennai-Mumbai IndiGo flight receives bomb threat message

A Mumbai-bound IndiGo flight from Chennai received a bomb threat message on the day around 40 airports across the country received hoax bomb threats. The bomb threat message was received by IndiGo’s call centre in New Delhi. The flight landed safely at the Mumbai airport at 10:30 pm. 

"IndiGo flight 6E 5149, operating from Chennai to Mumbai, had received a bomb threat. Upon landing in Mumbai, the crew followed protocol and the aircraft was taken to an isolation bay," the airline said in a statement. It said that all passengers disembarked safely. 

The airline worked with security agencies to complete all security checks after which the aircraft was scheduled to be positioned back in the terminal area. 

This bomb threat came as 41 airports, including Varanasi, Chennai, Patna,  Nagpur, Vadodara, Coimbatore, Jabalpur and Jaipur, received bomb threat emails prompting authorities to scramble contingency measures and carry out anti-sabotage checks that lasted hours. Each of these threats was found to be a hoax, official sources said.

Airport terminals received the emails from the ID exhumedyou888@gmail.com at around 12:40 pm. The emails received by the airports carried almost the following identical message: "Hello, there are explosives hidden in the Airport. The bombs will soon explode. You will all die."

As per reports in news agency PTI, an online group called ‘KNR’ is suspected to be behind these hoax threat emails. The group reportedly issued similar emails to several schools in Delhi-NCR on May 1, the sources said.

Similar mails were sent to airports in April too.