A Chennai-Mumbai IndiGo flight on Tuesday received a bomb threat, said the airlines in a statement. Following the protocol, the plane landed safely at the Mumbai airport at 10.30 pm.
"IndiGo flight 6E 5149, operating from Chennai to Mumbai, had received a bomb threat. Upon landing in Mumbai, the crew followed protocol and the aircraft was taken to an isolation bay. All passengers have safely disembarked the aircraft. We are working with the security agencies and post-completion of all security checks, the aircraft will be positioned back in the terminal area," the statement read.
Earlier a few hours ago, forty-one airports, including in Varanasi, Chennai, Patna and Jaipur, received bomb threat emails, prompting authorities to scramble contingency measures and carry out anti-sabotage checks that lasted hours, and each of them was found to be a hoax.
Security was beefed up as agencies swept the airport terminals after the emails were received around 12.40 pm from the ID exhumedyou888@gmail.com, said the officials.
The airports in Varanasi, Chennai, Patna, Nagpur, Jaipur, Vadodara, Coimbatore and Jabalpur were among those that received the hoax threats.
An online group called "KNR" is suspected to be behind these hoax threat emails. The group reportedly issued similar emails to several schools in the Delhi-National Capital Region on May 1, the sources said.
The emails received by the airports carried almost the identical message: "Hello, there are explosives hidden in the Airport. The bombs will soon explode. You will all die."
(With PTI inputs)
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