A 24-year-old man was detained by the police in Jaipur on Friday for sending out a bomb hoax tweet that led to a midair scare for a Dubai-bound Jet Airways flight from Mumbai following which it made an emergency landing in Muscat.
NDTV reported that Surinder Pratap, the man who allegedly sent out the bomb hoax tweet, will be handed over to Mumbai police on 11 July. According to some reports, Pratap surrendered to the police in Jaipur. He was yet to be formally booked so he had not been arrested yet, according to PTI.
The police said Pratap, a native of Uttar Pradesh, is as an HR executive with an MNC. On Thursday morning, Surinder Partap posted the hoax message from his Twitter handle: "Bomb spotted in #Jet Airways 9W-536 from Mumbai to Dubai. At 12:25 from CSIA # Operation Badla."
His Twitter handle now been disabled.
The Jet Airways staff noticed the hoax tweet an hour after the flight took off from Mumbai and alerted the pilots, who then issued a Code 5 signal, seeking assistance from the Muscat International Airport for an emergency landing.
The Jet Airways flight, 9W 536, had departed from Mumbai at 12.46pm (IST). The Boeing 727-800 plane had 54 passengers and seven crew members.
Pratap reportedly told the police that he sent out the tweet "casually" without knowing the repercussions of his action.
The flight was scheduled to arrive in Dubai at 3.30pm. However, after the emegency landing, it departed Muscat at 9.15 PM and landed in Dubai around 10.30pm (Indian time).
