Leaders in India are looking to crack down on hoax bomb threats against airlines, after a massive surge in threats spanning months.
According to BBC News, there were at least 90 hoax bomb threats against flights at Indian airports just last week, with 41 threats recorded in a single day in June. Between 2014 and 2017, there were just 120 hoax bomb alerts combined across all Indian airports, the bulk of which were directed at the country’s two largest hubs in Delhi and Mumbai.
Although it’s unclear what exactly it is that’s sparked this recent increase, most of the threats appear to be coming from anonymous accounts on social media. Most recently, authorities traced four separate hoaxes to a 17-year-old high school dropout, who had created a social media account solely for issuing threats to airlines. This also comes as air travel in India has also surged to record levels, with its airlines carrying more than 484,000 passengers on October 14, the most for a single day in the country’s history.
On October 21, Indian civil aviation minister Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu announced plans to introduce new legislation that would put offenders on a no-fly list, allow authorities to arrest and investigate them without a court order, and mandate a five-year prison sentence if someone is found guilty. Current laws in India call for life imprisonment for large-scale threats to airport safety, although it’s believed that such a sentence would be considered by courts to be too severe for hoax calls.
