Indian plane in emergency landing after hijack threat
01 Feb 2009 17:34:27 GMT Source: Reuters
(Adds details, quotes) By Bappa Majumdar NEW DELHI, Feb 1 (Reuters) - A domestic airliner flying from India's tourist state of Goa made an emergency landing in New Delhi on Sunday after two passengers threatened to hijack the plane, a government statement said. Heavily-armed National Security Guard commandos surrounded the plane once it landed and was taxied to an isolated bay at the Indira Gandhi International Airport. "There were couple of passengers behaving aggressively who also said that they would hijack the plane," a Ministry of Civil Aviation statement said, adding that an anti-hijacking drill followed. India's Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram told CNN-IBN television that the crew had reported the incident as "a potential hijack situation". He said three passengers had been detained. India has been tense since November when attacks by Islamist gunmen in Mumbai killed 179 people. There have been a series of bombings in other cities over the past year. The Indigo Airlines flight with 162 passengers and six crews landed in New Delhi at around 1200 GMT. Flight operations at the airport were suspended for sometime as a precautionary measure. An official of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security told Reuters that one of the detained passengers was drunk and had said he was carrying a knife. (Writing by Krittivas Mukherjee; editing by Elizabeth Piper)
India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (in blue turban) gestures as he comes out after being discharged from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), in New Delhi February 1, 2009. ...
