MIA had bomb scares in 2003, 2017

The incident of a live bomb being planted on the premises of Mangalore International Airport (MIA) on Monday was the first such instance according to senior police officers.

There were, however, two instances of bomb scares reported at the airport.

In 2003, when Seemanth Kumar Singh was serving as the district superintendent of police, the airport authorities had received an anonymous letter.

“The letter had warned the Airport Authority of India (AAI) that a flight carrying a bomb would be forced to crash against the Vidhana Soudha,” recollected Singh, who is currently serving as IGP (Administration), chief office, in Bengaluru. The police, after a frantic search, realised that the threat was a hoax, he added.

A few days later, Singh and his then deputy Pankaj Kumar Thakur had succeeded in arresting Subrahmanya from Udupi, who had written the letter. The manual typewriter, which he had used to type the hoax threat, had led to the arrest.

In September 2017, a passenger’s ‘self-designed’ power bank was mistaken for a sophisticated explosive by the security staff at the airport. The passenger was declared innocent and sent to Dubai by the next flight.

A decade ago, a bag that had been found abandoned near Nehru Maidan was declared as containing explosives. After an hour-long operation, the police found that the bag was full of aluminium coins and it belonged to an entrepreneur.