Asked to pay for excess baggage, woman creates bomb scare at Mumbai airport

Upset over being asked to pay for excess baggage, a female traveller at the Mumbai international airport declared that her bag contained a bomb, causing a brief frenzy among the security staff before she was taken into custody, an official said on Friday.

A search of her baggage was conducted and there was nothing suspicious in it, the official said. The incident took place on May 29 when the woman, a homemaker from South Mumbai, was scheduled to visit Kolkata with her husband and children to meet her mother, he said.

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After reaching the check-in counter, she asked an airline employee for a boarding pass and handed over two bags to the staff. As per the airlines rules, a single bag with a maximum weight of 15 kg is allowed to be checked in for each domestic flyer. Since the woman’s bags weighed a total of 22.05 kg, she was asked to pay for excess baggage, he said.

However, the woman allegedly refused to pay for the additional weight and got into an argument with the airline staff. She later claimed that one of her bags contained a bomb, the official said.

Though the on-duty Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel checked her bag and found nothing suspicious in it, the woman’s claim sparked panic at the airport for some time, he said.

The woman was then handed over to the Sahar police, which registered a first information report (FIR) against her for endangering lives and safety of others, he said. The police asked the woman to remain present in a court the next day, when they also submitted a chargesheet in the case, he added.

(With agency inputs)