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Vajpayee Orders Probe Into "Hijack" Incident
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has ordered a high-level probe into a bizarre "hijack" of regular flight from Bombay to New Delhi which lasted nearly five hours early Thursday morning.
Vajpayee, who kept awake until 4 a.m. to monitor the situation, expressed displeasure over the series of events and ordered that an inquiry be conducted by Special Secretary of Home Affairs Ministry S.B. Mohapatra.
Earlier, the Civil Aviation Ministry announced in a statement that the government set up a committee headed by Director General of Civil Aviation H.S. Khola to go into the "hijack" drama, which turned out to be a "false alarm."
The drama began shortly after the Boeing 737 jet, belonging to the Alliance Air, left Bombay at 2315 p.m. local time on Wednesday on its way to New Delhi with 46 passengers and a crew of six on board.
Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Hussain said the air traffic control at Ahmedabad received an anonymous call, declaring that the flight would be hijacked, and the controllers then alerted the pilot, who promptly locked the cockpit door.
Contrary to this statement, the government said later that the first information that the plane was hijacked was received on a telephone in the Alliance Air operation department in New Delhi just seven minutes after the flight was air-borne from Bombay.
Vajpayee expressed his displeasure over the drama, saying that this type of incidents should not happen again.
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