Amritsar: Panic gripped the Shri Guru Ramdas ji International Airport  terminal when cleaning staff of Air India UK to  Amritsar flight reported Bomb threat to the Airport Authority here on August 21.

According to Punjab Police, a slip was found to cleaning staff in the aircraft toilet at Amritsar Airport and the matter was immediately reported to the Airport Authority which further called the Central Industrial Force (CISF) and the plane was parked in the isolated place forthwith.  During thorough rummaging of the plane nothing objectionable was found and clean chit was issued in the evening at 4.30 p.m. The plane which was scheduled to take off back to Birmingham was allowed to move at 6.00 p.m around two hours behind the schedule.

On being contacted to Airport Authority, confirming the bomb threat said, “A Bomb threat was received for incoming Indian Airlines flight AI 170 from Gatwik, UK to Amritsar consisting of 187 passengers.

Airport official further said, “The flight was fully searched by the authorized personnel following all codal procedure. But no explosive/bomb was found. It was a hoax call. The flight again departed for Gatwik from Amritsar with 240 passengers”.

Airport sources said that the search operation inside the plane remained for three hours.

Bomb threat came to light, when the plane was completely empty and placed in the hangar, after two hours when cleaning work was in progress, a slip wherein a BOMB word was written was found in the toilet of the plane.

Sources said that by the time slip was found, all the passengers who arrived in the flight had left the airport and were not aware of the bomb threat. As they all had checked out. This aircraft was to return to the UK from Amritsar airport at 1.30 pm, but after this threat, the aircraft was isolated at the airport for thorough rummaging and a bomb disposal squad was also called on the spot.