Mumbai, Feb. 7: A young man trying to stop his father from flying to Dubai with his second wife thought it a good idea to send a hoax call about a terrorist on board.
On hindsight, however, mentioning the precise seat number may have been a mistake.
It just made it easier for police to zero in on the family dispute that caused an Emirates flight to be held up here for over four hours today, and take the 27- year-old caller in for questioning.
Flight EK 505, scheduled to take off at 9.30am for Dubai on its way to Manchester, was taxiing around 9.48 when Mumbai air traffic control (ATC) received a request from Emirates to stop the flight, a source said.
“Their cargo supervisor had got an anonymous call which claimed that a Lashkar-e-Toiba operative was travelling on seat 17F. After quickly consulting the CISF, we asked the pilot to return,” the ATC source said.
The caller had given his name as Suresh Chavan and told an Emirates official he had overheard a conversation between two strangers who said a Lashkar operative would be on the flight.
The plane was diverted to the airport’s technical area, Tango 5, and by 10.40am all 356 passengers had been evacuated.
“Full security procedures were activated including the deplaning of all passengers and a thorough screening of the aircraft, passengers and baggage,” an Emirates statement said.
A second screening followed with the aid of security agencies to check all the passengers’ antecedents.
“Special checks were carried out on the passenger seated on 17F and his companion on 17G,” an airport police source said.
The crucial lead, however, was that the 17F passenger — Shahbaz Khan, 50, who ran a travel agency in Mumbai’s Fort area — had two wives. “He (the caller) wanted to teach his father a lesson on his mother’s behalf. We are questioning him,” a senior officer said.
Shahbaz and his wife, who meant to attend a wedding in Dubai, were taken to the international airport police station for interrogation.
“His wife is a heart patient, so we sent her back home soon. Shahbaz is being questioned; we’ll let him off too,” the officer said.
Shahbaz’s wife suggested her stepson must have made the call since the two sides of the family were embroiled in a property dispute, PTI quoted a police source as saying.
The plane left for Dubai with the rest of the passengers at 2pm.
