Jeweller is first person on national no- fly list

■ Salla was put on the list for hijack scare

◗ Hijack note was in Urdu and English, asking the plane be flown straight to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir

New Delhi, May 20: A Mumbai- based jeweller, who created a hijack scare onboard a Jet Airways flight in October last year, has become the first person to be put on the National No Fly List, eight months after it was unveiled.

Incidentally, he was also the first to be booked under the stringent AntiHijacking Act which had replaced the vintage law of 1982. Birju Kishore Salla ( 37) was arrested in October last year by police following the emergency landing made by the Mumbai- Delhi Jet Airways plane at the Ahmedabad airport after the pilot was alerted about a note, which mentioned that there were hijackers and a bomb in the cargo area, being found in the plane’ washroom by a cabin crew. “Mr Salla, the guy who had created the hijack scare in a Jet Airways flight last year, is the first person to be put on the no fly list,” a senior DGCA official said confirming the development.

The then union civil aviation minister, Ashok Gajapathi Raju, had advised airlines to put him on the no- fly list, in addition to other statutory criminal action.

Under the revised civil aviation requirement ( CAR), a passenger can be considered to be placed under three categories of unruly behaviour, with category three bearing the harshest punishement.

Mr Salla has been placed under the third category. It says that if a passenger’s behaviour is considered life threatening like affecting the safety of the aircraft then he or she can be banned for up to two years or more.

Unruly behaviour is probed by an internal committee set up by every domestic airline under the chairmanship of a retired District and Sessions judge. Its members are from different scheduled airlines and passenger associations, consumer associations and retired officials of the consumer dispute redressal forum.