NEW DELHI, Oct 5: Indian newspapers heaped scorn on Friday on senior security officials’ handling of a supposed mid-air hijacking that turned into a false alarm.
The hijacking that never was led to ministers being roused from their beds just before midnight on Wednesday and crack commandos storming the Boeing 737 plane.
“Hijackass”, blared a front-page headline in the Indian Express. “Goof-ups galore in hijack farce,” read another headline in the Hindustan Times. “Predawn hijack a comedy of terror,” said the Times of India.
The papers wanted to know why officials kept on believing the flight to Delhi from Mumbai had been seized long after commandos stormed the cockpit and found no hijackers and passengers told relatives on mobile phones all was normal inside the cabin.
At one point Civil Aviation Secretary A.HJ. Jung went on TV to say there were “two hijackers who spoke broken English”.
“Instead of expressing the view the ‘crisis management machinery was in good condition...,’ (civil aviation minister) Shahnawaz Hussain should be asking why a cloud of misinformation was left hanging for so long,” the Hindustan Times said.
Newspapers said that security officials’ jumpiness was excessive.—Reuters
