While SpiceJet has confirmed that the call received on Thursday over a bomb threat was fake, Delhi Police arrested Abhinav Prakash (24), a resident of Dwarka, for making the hoax call.
After securing the flight and ensuring that there were no suspicious items, the security manager of SpiceJet, Varun Kumar, lodged a police complaint.
On tracing the phone number from which the call was received, the police conducted a raid at Prakash's house and arrested him on Friday.
During the course of the investigation, Prakash admitted to making the call and said that the same was done so that his friends could spend some more time with their new-found lovers from their recent trip to Manali.
According to a report by India Today, Prakash said that his friends Rakesh alias Bunty and Kunal Sehrawat recently went to Manali where they became friends with two local women. The two girls were leaving for Pune on the SpiceJet flight but Prakash's friends told him they wanted to spend some more time with their girlfriends and asked him to devise a plan to delay their flight.
Prakash works as a trainee with British Airways at DLF Qutub Plaza in Gurugram for the last seven months.
On Thursday, a call was received at the SpiceJet reservation office about a bomb in the aircraft scheduled to operate flight SG 8938 (Delhi-Pune).
At that time, boarding of passengers for the flight had not started, an airline spokesperson said in a statement on Friday.
Following the call, the aircraft was moved to an isolation bay and was thoroughly inspected by security officials.
(with PTI inputs)
