Indian businessman gets life imprisonment, Dh2.6 million fine for hijack scare on flight

Birju Salla became the first person to be put under the 'national no fly list'.

A special National Investigation Agency court in Ahmedabad today sentenced a Mumbai-based businessman to life in prison and imposed a fine of Rs5 crore (approximately Dh2.6 million)on him for leaving a hijack threat note on a Jet Airways plane in October 2017.
The court of special NIA judge K M Dave said the fine amount submitted by the convict Birju Salla will be distributed among the crew members and passengers on board the affected plane.
Salla was accused of creating a hijack scare by planting a threat note written in English and Urdu in the tissue paper box of the aircraft's toilet on October 30.
After the incident, Salla became the first person to be put under the "national no fly list", and was also the first to be booked under the stringent Anti Hijacking Act, which had replaced a vintage law of 1982.
The NIA had in January last year filed a charge sheet against him under sections 3(1), 3(2)(a) and 4(b) of the Anti-Hijacking Act, 2016.
The NIA had said Salla prepared a "threat note" in both English and Urdu language and placed it "intentionally" in the tissue paper box of the toilet near the business class of the Mumbai-Delhi Jet Airways flight 9W339 on October 30, thereby jeopardizing the safety of passengers and crew on board.
He was arrested in October 2017 after the plane made an emergency landing at the Ahmedabad airport.
He confessed to the crime and told investigators that he had done it in the hope that it would force Jet Airways to close its Delhi operation and his girlfriend, who worked in the airline's Delhi office, would come back to Mumbai.

• India