Mumbai: One person has been arrested in connection with a hoax bomb call because of which a Mumbai-Delhi GoAir flight was stranded at the Mumbai airport for hours on Saturday.
Sandeep Menon, an engineer, was arrested yesterday as he wanted to stop his business partner Ambrish Parikh from leaving the city and therefore allegedly made a call saying that Parikh was carrying explosives, police said today.
Menon had called up the GoAir office in Mumbai and reportedly said that one of the passengers in the Delhi-bound flight was "a suicide bomber," police said.
During investigation, Menon told the police that he had recently won a contract from an educational institute in Oman to train over 300 students for the IIT entrance exam. At that time, Menon had contacted Parikh as he himself did not have an experience in vocational training.
Parikh was to design the study module and train the aspirants, police said. When Parikh arrived in the city last week, he had asked Menon for an advance payment and this was when a dispute had erupted between them, following which Parikh refused to take any persuasion from Menon and wanted to leave the city.
Later, Menon made a hoax call to the airliner.
A Mumbai-Delhi GoAir flight 343 returned to an isolated bay on Saturday night after the pilot informed the ATC of a bomb scare. Menon had procured a SIM card using bogus documents to call up the airliner, police said.
The accused has been remanded to police custody till November 19, they added.
PTI