Commodore son’s flight of fury

New Delhi: A chartered accountant apparently sold on his air commodore father’s profession is being held responsible for Sunday’s “hijack threat” that activated a security drill, held up 30 flights and 2,000 passengers and spoiled the home minister’s Sunday.
If he is found guilty under a stringent law invoked against him, Jitendra Kumar Mola could be kept in jail for life or as many as 14 years.
The 40-year-old Mola has been charged with endangering public safety by claiming in mid-air that he was involved with the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane — because he was not allowed to switch his designated seat on an IndiGo flight from Goa to Delhi yesterday.
Delhi police sources claimed Mola had said during questioning that he made the hijack claim “just for kicks”.
Accounts of fellow passengers and investigators suggest the chartered accountant took pride in posing as a sky marshal and had some fascination for aviation posts — an interest he could have picked up from his father who is a retired air commodore. Mola and his family stay in a defence officer’s colony in Sector 7 in west Delhi’s Dwarka. The police said Mola told an airhostess that he was a sky marshal and misled several passengers on or before the flight. Sameer Uppal, who was picked up by commandos because he was seen speaking to Mola but was eventually freed, told the police that the fellow passenger had introduced himself as an Indian Air Force officer.
Another passenger Harpreet Anand, also picked up but released later, said Mola claimed he was an official of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
These claims could have been passed off as harmless but the matter spun out of control when Mola was not allowed to change seats. Mola told the airhostess he was involved in the Kandahar hijacking. The airhostess then informed the captain who alerted Delhi airport.
PTI quoted police as also saying: “Mola claimed that he had a gun and infectious needles.”
A medical examination did not find traces of alcohol — the only anomaly mentioned was low pressure which a doctor said could not be the reason for his behaviour.
Additional commissioner of police Ujjwal Mishra said Mola had complained of breathlessness and low blood pressure at Goa airport.
“...I don’t see any connection— his low BP couldn’t have made him aggressive,” said Rajat Mitra, a doctor in Delhi, a city not unfamiliar with motorists flying off the handle at the slightest provocation.
Mola did not betray any aggression as he headed to jail. Wearing a grey blazer and a white shirt, he refused to comment on his behaviour.
02/02/09 Ananya Sengupta/The Telegraph

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Categories: Airports Feb 2009, Indigo Airlines Feb 2009, Safety Feb 2009