Mumbai trader denied bail by HC in hijacking threat case

GANDHINAGAR: Gujarat high court on Wednesday denied bail to the lovelorn Mumbai jeweller, Birju Salla, in connection with causing a hijacking and bomb scare aboard a Mumbai-Delhi flight last October.
Salla allegedly placed a chit containing a threat in a dustbin in the plane’s toilet. The threat led to an emergency landing at Ahmedabad airport.

He was thus booked in Ahmedabad. Investigations by the National Investigation Agency later revealed this was Salla’s desperate attempt to revive a relationship with an employee of the airline. He became the first person in the country to be booked under the stringent Anti-Hijacking Act and now faces life imprisonment if convicted.

A special NIA court rejected Salla’s bail plea in November last year. The probe agency later filed a chargesheet and Salla filed a second bail application before the high court. However, a bench of Justice S R Brahmbhatt and Justice R P Dholaria refused to grant him bail.

While Salla’s counsel argued that there was not enough evidence to implicate Salla on the basis the mere recovery of a chit with a typed message from a toilet, the NIA submitted that the investigation revealed that the chit made at Salla’s Mumbai office.

The NIA court had denied Salla bail with the observation that using words like ‘POK’ (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir), the use of Urdu in the chit and the indication that 12 persons were involved would naturally cause panic in the minds of the cabin crew. The threat was taken seriously enough and the pilot diverted the flight from its original path and make an emergency landing at the Ahmedabad airport.

The special court also opined that the threat resulted in indirect control exercised by the accused in diverting the flight from its original path.