14 January 2023 , 12:45
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A young Indian man made a hoax bomb call for his friends so they could spend more time with two women they met on holiday.
Abhinav Prakash, 24, an airline worker from Delhi, was arrested after calling India's budget airline provider SpiceJet to warn them of a non-existent explosive device on a specific aircraft.
His two pals, Kunal Sehrawat and Rakesh, are said to have asked for his help to stop the departure of two women they met while on a road trip to the popular Himalayan mountain resort of Manali.
After making the bomb call, Prakash is said to have contacted the girls and the trio celebrated after hearing the flight had stayed on the tarmac, cops say.
Passengers Can be seen in Srinagar-Delhi bound SpiceJet Airline (NurPhoto via Getty Images)Authorities are still searching for Sehrawat and Rakesh for their part in the scheme, with the two women also expected to be questioned as part of the probe.
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Under interrogation, which can be conducted with questionable and outright barbaric methods in India, Prakash confessed that his childhood friends had been on road trip to Manali when they met two women from Maharashtra, around 1200 miles south, and the foursome became close.
The women boarded a SpiceJet flight from Delhi to Pune on Thursday.
Prakash told cops that Kunal and Rakesh had asked him to find a way for them to stay a little longer, and to delay their departure from Delhi.
SpiceJet planes in Mumbai (Bloomberg via Getty Images)“As per Prakash, Kunal and Rakesh told him that they wanted to spend some more time with them and instigated the accused to chalk out a plan to somehow delay their departure from Delhi,” senior police detective Ravi Singh said.
“When the news of the arrest of Abhinav Prakash reached Kunal and Rakesh, they fled away from their addresses and are presently absconding. Efforts are being made to trace them,” Mr Singh added.
On receiving the call on Thursday, police sprung into action and the 182-person flight - which had not yet taken off - was taken into isolation, checked and sanitised.
The call was declared a hoax and the flight was allowed to take off.
Inspectors Yashpal Singh and Virender Pakhre set up a task force, tracing the call back to Prakash's phone.
They raided his home and took him into custody.