Sambra Airport in Karnataka's Belagavi Gets Bomb Threat, Search Underway

Belagavi: Amid a spate of bomb threats received by several airlines in the past few days, Sambra airport in Karnataka's Belagavi received a bomb threat on Sunday. The Sambra airport is the latest in the series to get a bomb threat. It is learnt that the director of Sambra airport, Thyagaraj, received a threat letter via email. The letter written by unidentified individual threatened of blowing up the airport, triggering panic in the area.

It has come to light that that the bomb threat email was received from Chennai. Meanwhile, security has been beefed up at airport amid a bomb scare. Police, Dog squad and bomb squad are carrying out checks at the airport. A case has been registered at Marihal police station in reard with the threat mail.

Bomb Scare on Indigo Flight

In a separate incident, a Pune-Jodhpur Indigo flight (6E133) received a bomb threat on Monday (October 20) afternoon, prompting landing at Jodhpur airport. According to sources, the flight landed safely at around 1.07pm, with all passengers unharmed.

The series of such threats indicates a planned effort to create disorder and panic among the aviation industry. In this week, over 70 flights of several airlines including Air India , Air India Express, SpiceJet, Akasa Air, Air India , IndiGo, Alliance Air, Air India Express, Akasa Air received bomb threats leading to panic among passengers. The threats were later declared hoax. More than 30 flights of various Indian airlines, including Vistara, Air India and IndiGo, received bomb threats on Saturday alone.

• On Monday, three international flights departing from Mumbai received bomb threats. These three flights included New York-bound Air India flight, Muscat-bound IndiGo flight and Jeddah-bound IndiGo flight.
• Whereas on Tuesday, seven flights were gripped under bomb scare. These seven flights include a  Jaipur-Bengaluru Air India Express flight via Ayodhya (IX765), a Darbhanga-Mumbai SpiceJet flight (SG116), a Bagdogra-Bengaluru Akasa Air flight (QP 1373), a Delhi-Chicago Air India flight  (AI 127), an Indigo flight from Dammam (Saudi Arabia) to Lucknow (6E 98), an Alliance Air Amritsar-Dehradun-Delhi flight (9I 650) and a Madurai-Singapore Air India Express flight (IX 684).
• Meanwhile on Wednesday, two flights including Delhi-Bengaluru Akasa aircraft and Mumbai-Delhi IndiGo aircraft, got bomb threats. 
• On Saturday, Vistara said five of its flights on international routes received security threats through social media while IndiGo said at least four of its flights got security-related alerts. The five flights of Vistara were UK106 (Singapore to Mumbai), UK027 (Mumbai to Frankfurt), UK107 (Mumbai to Singapore), UK121 (Delhi to Bangkok) and UK131 (Mumbai to Colombo). IndiGo issued statements for at least four flights with respect to the threats. They were 6E17 (Mumbai to Istanbul), 6E11 (Delhi to Istanbul), 6E184 (Jodhpur to Delhi) and 6E108 (Hyderabad to Chandigarh).

In the wake of several flights receiving bomb threats, the central government on Wednesday, October 16, announced to double the number of air marshals on ‘sensitive routes’. The news was confirmed by a senior official from the Ministry of Home Affairs who stated that the decision has been taken recently after an assessment of the growing threat and getting inputs from intelligence agencies.

"The fresh batch of Air Narshals will be deployed on new international routes added in sensitive category based on intelligence report. The decision was taken after several rounds of meetings will all stakeholders in aviation security," the official added.