In a first, a special NIA court in Ahmedabad sentenced Birju Salla, a businessman, to life imprisonment and imposed a fine of ₹5 crore for placing a ‘hoax’ hijack note on a Jet Airways plane in October 2017.
Of the fine deposited by Salla, the pilots on the aircraft would get a compensation of ₹1 lakh each, each air hostess ₹50,000 and each passenger ₹25,000 for the “misery undergone by them,” the court of special NIA judge K M Dave said.
During interrogation, Salla said he committed the crime to force the airline shut its Delhi operation which would lead his girlfriend, who worked there, to come back to Mumbai.
Salla was accused of creating a hijack scare by planting the threat note written in English and Urdu in the tissue paper box of the toilet near the business class of the Mumbai-Delhi flight on October 30, thereby jeopardising the safety of the passengers and the crew.
He was arrested after the plane made an emergency landing at the Ahmedabad airport.
Dubious distinction
Salla will spend the remainder of his life in prison, an NIA official said. He was also the first person to be put on the no-fly list, constituted in 2017, and also the first to be tried under the stringent Anti-Hijacking Act, 2016, which had replaced the earlier 1982 Act.
The note asked the plane to be flown to Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. It said: “There are hijackers on board and explosives on the plane.”
Published - June 11, 2019 07:06 pm IST
