Hijack alert to all airports, airlines

Government has put all Air India planes operating in the country's neighbourhood on high security alert and directed the airlines to deploy sky marshals following intelligence inputs that Pakistan-based LeT and other terror groups were planning to hijack a flight. A directive has been issued to all Indian missions abroad to sensitise the staff of the airlines, official sources said.

According to intelligence inputs, terrorist groups having allegiance with Al-Qaida, Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jamat-ul-Dawa were planning to hijack an Air India plane especially operating in or from SAARC countries -- Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Maldives, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India as well.
Hijacking could be attempted by the terrorists from airports located at Yangon, Dhaka and Colombo. Security of planes operating to Bhutan has also been beefed up, the sources said.
Following this input, the Civil Aviation Ministry has directed all the airlines especially Air India to take extra steps besides asking Bureau of Civil Aviation Security to deploy sky marshals on aircraft operating on such routes, the sources said.
On its part, the External Affairs Ministry has asked Indian missions, particularly in SAARC countries, to brief the staff of the Air India and other Indian carriers about the threat.
Taking a serious view of the threat, the Home Ministry yesterday issued directions to upgrade security.
The intelligence input has been shared with India by Western spy agencies, which had received an intercept.
Special Secretary (Internal Security) U K Bansal said, "We have intelligence inputs that there could be a hijack attempt of Indian planes. So we have alerted the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) and tightened security in all airports in the country."
The BCAS has issued an advisory to all airlines to conduct a mandatory secondary ladder point check on all aircraft flying in the region.