Passenger Arrested For Terror Prank On A Flight From Kolkata To Mumbai

It sounds like another shocking report of terrorism: A young passenger on a plane heading to Mumbai made a terror prank by telling his friends via Snapchat that he planned to hijack the plane and make it explode. He also took a picture of himself with half of his face covered and captioned it “Terrorists on Flight”.

It was reminiscent of some plane attacks except that in this case, the story was actually a prank.

Jet Airways

The young passenger was traveling to Mumbai via Jet Airways, and this was only his joke for some close friends. He was later arrested for faking a terror attack.

According to The Times Of India, Yogvedanta Poddar, the young man in question snapped a selfie of him which made another passenger became suspicious and took this matter to the flight attendants. After the pilot was notified, he passed on the information to the airport security.

As a result of Poddar’s fake hijacking, the flight’s take-off was canceled, and he was taken into custody by Kolkata airport security.

The Airport Authorities announced that the man was caught chatting on Snapchat using suspicious language which sounded like he was about to make a hijack attempt. A co-passenger reported this incident to the flight crew. CIFS (short for Central Industrial Security Force) was also notified.

Poddar was later taken to the police by the CIFS for questioning. Poddar, a Salt Lake’s resident in Kolkata, admitted that what he did was just a prank and he was actually on the way to Mumbai to attend a job interview.

A statement released by the CIFS confirmed that no suspicious object that could be used in a terror attack was found on Poddar or in his luggage. The flight with 160 passengers on board, which was supposed to take off at 9.15 am, was delayed for 1 hour and 10 minutes.