Lovelorn businessman gets life for fake hijack

A businessman who planted a hijack threat on a plane to persuade his stewardess lover to give up her job has been jailed for life.

An anti-terrorism court in Ahmedabad, western India, found Birju Salla guilty of planting a threat letter in the lavatory of a Jet Airways flight between Mumbai and Delhi in October 2017. The note claimed hijackers and bombs were on board and demanded that the plane be diverted to Pakistanadministered Kashmir.

Salla told investigators he had hoped the airline’s Delhi-mumbai service would end after the “hijack”, leaving his girlfriend jobless and ready to settle down.