Online lover cries ’hijack’ to avoid holiday A

MARRIED man with an online girlfriend wasn’t quite sure how to say no when his digital darling demanded he take her on holiday.

So Motaparthi Vamshi Krishna did the next best thing — he sent her a fake plane ticket and then tried to shut down the airport.

The 32-year-old dad sent an e-mail to Mumbai police from an Internet cafe in Hyderabad, India, claiming to be a woman who had overheard “six guys talking about plane hijack tommarrow [sic] in Hyderabad, Chennai and Mumbai airport”.

His report led to police beefing up security at the three airports, although no flights were cancelled.

A statement by the Hyderabad police said they had traced the computer’s IP address to the Internet café and identified Krishna through CCTV footage.

Krishna, who works as a travel agent, allegedly confessed that his Chennai-based online girlfriend had asked him to take her on a trip to Mumbai and Goa.

Since he couldn’t afford the trip, he’d hatched a plan to send her a fake plane ticket from Chennai to Mumbai. Then he created an e-mail account and sent the hoax e-mail to the police.

At a press conference, the deputy commissioner of police B Limba Reddy said Krishna had been arrested on four charges, including impersonation and providing false information.

“He didn’t have the money but if he cancelled because of that, it would have hurt his pride and his friendship with the girl would’ve come to an end,” Reddy said.

“So, his thinking was that if the flight was to be cancelled and it was because of the airport, he wouldn’t be at fault.”