Ahmedabad: A special NIA court here Tuesday awarded life imprisonment to a Mumbai-based businessman and imposed a fine of Rs 5 crore on him for leaving a hijack threat note on a Jet Airways plane in October 2017.
The court of special NIA judge K M Dave said the fine amount submitted by the convicted businessman Birju Salla, will be distributed among the crew members and passengers on board the affected plane.
Salla was accused of creating a hijack scare October 30 by planting a threat note written in English and Urdu in the tissue paper box of the Mumbai-Delhi Jet Airways flight’s washroom, thereby jeopardizing the safety of passengers and crew on board.
The note asked the plane to be flown into Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir.
After the incident, Salla become the first person to be put under the ‘national no fly list’, and was also the first to be booked under the stringent Anti Hijacking Act under sections 3(1), 3(2)(a) and 4(b).
He was arrested in October 2017 after the plane made an emergency landing at the Ahmedabad airport.
He confessed to the crime and told investigators that he had done it in the hope that it would force Jet Airways to close its Delhi operation and his girlfriend, who worked in the airline’s Delhi office, would come back to Mumbai.
(PTI)