Air India flight with 239 passengers on board, en route from Mumbai to New York City’s JFK Airport, was diverted and grounded today, and two additional flights were postponed, following the reports of multiple bomb threats posted on social media.
The airport in India’s main financial hub received a bomb threat on X (ex-Twitter) early Monday morning, specifying Air India flight AI119 traveling from Mumbai to New York City. This information was immediately relayed to national security authorities in Delhi.
Air India aircraft departed Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport at approximately 2AM but was subsequently diverted to Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, following directives from the federal government’s security regulatory committee. According to Indian security official, “standard safety protocols are being meticulously adhered to in order to guarantee the safety of the passengers and crew on board.”
Later in the day, two international flights operated by Indian low-cost airline IndiGo, scheduled to fly to Muscat, Oman and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia were redirected to isolated bays due to a bomb threat, according to local news sources.
This incident occurred shortly after Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a Sikh separatist leader residing in New York, who has been a focal point of significant controversy between New Delhi and its Western allies, including the United States and Canada, issued a threat to India.
Pannun, who has been classified as a terrorist by New Delhi and was reportedly the target of an assassination attempt in New York last year, warned of the potential initiation of “separatist movements” in various regions of India that share borders with Pakistan and China, specifically mentioning Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Manipur, and Nagaland. He also called upon Beijing to utilize its military capabilities to capture Indian territories.
In 2023, Pannun made bomb threats directed at India while the nation was hosting of the cricket World Cup. In 1985, Sikh separatists executed a terrorist act by detonating explosives on Air India Flight 182, which was traveling from Canada to India with a stop in London, resulting in the deaths of all 329 people on board.There were 268 Canadian citizens, predominantly of Indian descent, as well as 24 Indian nationals, among the dead.
From late April to June 2024, over 40 airports across India were subjected to bomb threats, prompting extensive anti-sabotage inspections that continued for several hours; however, all threats were ultimately determined to be false.
In June, multiple minors were apprehended in connection with distinct incidents involving bomb threats directed at airports. In one particular case, a ninth-grade student was allegedly “influenced” by information encountered on social media, where he had observed other children sending similar fraudulent e-mails.