541 flyers offloaded from London-bound Qatar Airways flight after bomb scare at Kolkata airport

All passengers were offloaded from a plane at the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport here after a man suddenly started shouting before take-off that there was a bomb in the aircraft.

The Qatar Airways flight to London from here via Doha with 541 passengers on board was getting ready for take-off at 3.29 am on Tuesday when one passenger started shouting that there was a bomb in the plane, PTI quoted as sources as saying.

The flight got delayed after the man started shouting. The aircraft was then evacuated and all passengers were offloaded. The bomb squad was called in and they conducted a search of the aircraft, but no bomb was found.

The man who shouted about the bomb was arrested and then interrogated by the CISF. He has been identified as a 35-year-old man from Kolkata.

During interrogation, the man told the authorities that another passenger on the plane scared him by saying that there was a bomb in the plane.

The father of the detained man was called to the Airport police station. The father showed some medical documents to police which stated that his son was undergoing treatment for mental illness.

The incident caused a lot of inconvenience to the passengers who were on the flight. They had to wait for several hours before they were able to board another flight to London.

In a similar incident, an anonymous caller in April gave a bomb threat to the Jayprakash Narayan Airport in Patna. Right after the call, a bomb disposal squad reached the site and searched the airport premises. The authorities received the call at around 10:47 am in the morning.

Earlier in the day, an Air India flight AI173, operating from New Delhi to San Fransisco, had to make an emergency landing at the Magadan airport in Russia after developing a technical issue with one of its engines. The flight was carrying 216 passengers and 16 crew members.

Also Read: Delhi-San Francisco Air India flight develops technical snag, lands in Magadan, Russia