High school student makes prank call to down 40 planes in Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur

Sources said that a call was made to the customer care number of the airline in which the caller told the officials that there were inputs that 40 planes of Indigo Airlines will be downed in residential areas of Kanpur, triggering a security alert.

Kanpur: Panic gripped Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur after a prank call by a high school student threatened to down 40 Indigo planes in the area, sources said. The incident took place on Saturday in Sen West Para police station area of the district as per officials. A police official said that the student called the customer care number of the airline and said that he had inputs that 40 planes of Indigo Airlines will be downed in residential areas.

Soon after the incident, the Delhi Police and IB swung into action on the inputs by the airlines, it was found that the person making the threat was a high school student of Sen West police station area of Kanpur. Later, the Crime Branch lodged a report with the Kanpur Police and took the student into custody. New Azad Nagar outpost in-charge Dharam Kushwaha said that following the inputs by the IB, the mobile number of the person making the threat was shared with the Crime Branch in Kanpur from DGP office Lucknow.

On tracing the number, the location turned out to be in Kanpur, he said. When the Crime Branch raided the location, the caller turned out to be a high school student, 15 years old. An official said that the student lives on rent with his father and mother is working in a private company. During interrogation, the student told the investigators that after watching the news and on Israel-Hamas war, he had retrieved the number of Indigo Airlines from the Internet and made the call through his father's cellphone.

Station in-charge Sen West Para Rakesh Kumar Singh said that the student was taken into custody and a case has been registered in this regard.