A flight from Mumbai to New York carrying 239 passengers was grounded on Monday and two other flights were delayed after several bomb threats were made on social media.
The airport in India’s financial capital received a message on X (formerly Twitter) in the early hours of Monday regarding a bomb on Air India flight AI119 from Mumbai to JFK in New York. The message was conveyed to security agencies in Delhi, Indian media reported.
The flight took off around 2am but was redirected to Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, where it was grounded on instructions from the federal government’s security regulatory committee. “Standard safety protocols are being diligently followed to ensure the safety of the passengers and crew on board,” said a police official quoted by news agency PTI.
Hours later, two international flights operated by another private air carrier IndiGo, heading to Muscat and Jeddah, were moved to isolated bays following a bomb threat, ANI news agency reported.
The incident came days after Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a Sikh separatist leader based in New York, threatened to “Balkanize” India. He has been at the center of a major controversy between New Delhi and its Western partners, including the US and Canada.
“By 2047, the current borders and boundaries of the Union of India will be redrawn and wiped out from the world map,” he said in a recent video. He threatened to initiate “separatists movements” in several regions of India bordering Pakistan and China, including Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Manipur, and Nagaland. He urged Beijing to use its military might to seize Indian territories.
Pannun has been designated as a terrorist by New Delhi and was allegedly the target of an assassination attempt in New York last year, according to US prosecutors, who accused New Delhi of involvement in the plot. Indian government rejected allegations but ha also set up a high-level committee to investigate “all relevant aspects” of the matter.
Last year, Pannun issued bomb threats against India as the country hosted the cricket World Cup.
Sikh separatists carried out a terrorist attack in 1985, when they planted explosives on Air India Flight 182 from Canada to India via London, killing 329 people. The victims included 268 Canadian citizens, mostly of Indian origin, and 24 Indians.
Earlier this year, more than 40 airports in India received bomb threats, leading to extensive anti-sabotage checks that lasted for hours, but all of the threats were found to be hoaxes. In June, several minors were detained in separate cases of sending bomb threats to airports. In one such case, a Class 9 student was reportedly “influenced” by news on social media platforms, where he had learned about children sending similar hoax emails.