Arrest without court order: Govt plans legislative action to tackle bomb threats

The government is planning legislative actions to deal with bomb threats to airlines, including placing the perpetrators in the no-fly list, Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu said on Monday. He added that efforts were being made to tackle the situation without compromising passengers’ safety and security.

• Editorial: Hoax threat calls

Amendments were being proposed to The Suppression of Unlawful Acts against Safety of Civil Aviation Act (SUASCA), 1982, whereby perpetrators could be arrested and probe could be initiated without a court order for offences when an aircraft was on the ground.

Nearly 100 flights have received bomb threats in one week, with at least 8 of them getting diverted, causing hardship to hundreds of passengers as well as sending security agencies into a tizzy.

The Civil Aviation Ministry is planning to amend the aircraft security rules as well as the SUASCA. Currently, the aviation norms mainly pertain to dealing with in-flight offences. At a briefing in the national capital, Naidu said the aircraft security rules would be amended to strengthen them and once the perpetrator of a bomb threat to a flight was caught, he would be placed in the no-fly list.

The SUASCA currently deals with offences such as those committed at airports, onboard an aircraft and disruption to air navigation facilities. While it mentions about offences that happen in-flight, the minister said the Act also has to cover offences on the ground and at airports also.

Most of the bomb threats, which later turned out be hoaxes, were issued through social media. “We are trying to make amendments and the legal team has worked on it…We need consultations with other ministries also…we are definitively pushing forward to have changes in the Act also so that it addresses offences that happen when the flight is on the ground and also make it cognisable offence,” he said.

Over the last seven days, eight flights were diverted due to bomb threats. “The situation is dynamic. The ministry and BCAS teams are assessing the situation case by case such as what kind of threats...,” Naidu said.

To a query on whether there is a conspiracy behind the threats, the minister said: “Let a thorough investigation happen. Till then, there is no point in commenting.” Possibilities of whether there could be better ways to deal with the situation were being looked at so that less inconvenience is caused to passengers, he said.

“We are continuously talking to law enforcement agencies. We are pushing to speed up the process,” Naidu said. Even though bomb threats were hoax, things cannot be taken non-seriously, the minister said and stressed that security had already been enhanced at airports. “There is 10 per cent more checking at security check points…we have increased CCTV cameras so that airports get monitored more thoroughly,” he said.

On Sunday alone, there were bomb threats to at least 25 flights.