Life term for Mumbai man for hijack hoax

A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court here on Tuesday handed down the first conviction in the maiden case filed in India under the new and stringent anti-hijacking law by awarding life sentence to a Mumbai businessman.

Birju Salla, who was pronounced guilty under the amended Anti-Hijacking Act, 2016, had planted a hijack-threat letter in a lavatory of a Mumbai-Delhi Jet Airways flight in October 2017. The letter said that hijackers were on board and the aircraft should be “flown straight to PoK”. It warned that “people would die” if efforts were made to land the aircraft elsewhere and added that a bomb had been planted in the cargo area.

The court also imposed a Rs 5-crore fine on Salla. From this amount, compensation of Rs 1 lakh each will be paid to the pilot and the co-pilot, Rs 50,000 each to two flight attendants and Rs 25,000 each to all the 116 passengers on board. The court observed that the fine was imposed as “Salla’s threat letter had caused severe mental stress and trauma which was unimaginable”.


Court agrees bomb threat conspiracy was ‘pre-planned’
The court of judge M K Dave considered evidence and testimonies of witnesses which proved that the conspiracy was “preplanned”.

Salla was arrested by the Ahmedabad crime branch on October 30, 2017. Flight attendants found the threat letter near the tissue box in the lavatory and alerted the pilot, who made an emergency landing at Ahmedabad.

The case was handed over to NIA in November 2017. In its chargesheet, NIA said Salla, a jilted lover, wanted to create trouble for a woman friend, an employee of Jet Airways, who had refused to live with him. Salla thought the letter would force the closure of the airline and the woman would lose her job.

The court considered evidence which proved that Salla had typed the letter in his office. The act was also captured by a digital video recorder in his office. A soft copy of the letter was retrieved from the hard disk of his laptop.

Salla had disclosed to his interrogators that he typed the letter on his laptop in English and used a Google tool to translate the text into Urdu.

NIA prosecutor Geeta Godambe had earlier submitted to the court that Salla should be given life imprisonment. According to the Anti-Hijacking Act, 2016, even making threats of “hijacking” is a serious offence which is punishable by a life term.

Salla was charged under sections 3 (1), 3(2) and 4(b) of the Act which deals with intentionally seizing or exercising control of an aircraft by force or threatening to hijack the plane.

During his duration in jail of over one and a half years, Salla had unsuccessfully sought bail a dozen times. He also became the first person to be put on the National No Fly List; his name was entered eight months after his arrest.