Patna Airport Receives Bomb Threat, Security Scaled Up

Patna: A bomb threat has been received at Patna's Jai Prakash Narayan International Airport, prompting agencies to scale up the security.

The threat has come months before the scheduled assembly elections in the state. 

Upon initial investigation, the threat turned out to be hoax call. However, state authorities pushed in all the required protocols and put in place all the security procedures to ensure the airport area has no security risk or challenging situation.

As per the officials, the security was beefed up at the Jayaprakash Narayan International (JPNI) Airport in Patna on Saturday after authorities received a bomb threat via email.

However, the threat turned out to be non-specific and a hoax.

In another statement, an official said that a bomb threat was received on the airport director's email ID at 9 pm on Friday.

Soon after the threat, a meeting of the Bomb Threat Assessment Committee (BTAC) was convened but this was too declared as non-specific, said a statement by the airport.

Patna Central SP Diksha informed that security was heightened after the airport received a bomb threat but it turned out to be a hoax call. The officials were trying to trace the IP address from where the threat mail was sent.

"The threat turned out to be non-specific and a hoax. We are trying to trace the IP address to find out the sender of the email,” the officer said.

The police have registered a case and further investigation is underway.

This was not the first time when airports in India have receive a hoax call. Earlier in the past, there have been several instances when authorities were rushed to scale up security after anonymous mails of bomb threats were made to trigger panic.