The Gujarat High Court quashed the conviction, life sentence and a fine of ₹5 crore imposed on a businessman accused of issuing a flight hijack threat, which later turned out to be a hoax.
On an appeal by accused businessman Birju Salla alias Amar Soni challenging his conviction and sentence under the Anti-Hijacking Act for leaving a ‘hijack’ threat note inside the lavatory of an aircraft, a bench of Justices AS Supehia and MR Mengdey said that prosecution failed to establish that the appellant had made the threat-note or planted it in the lavatory of the aircraft.
“The overall appreciation of the evidence reveals that the same does not establish the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt. The evidence does not unequivocally nail the appellant in a serious offence of hijacking,” the court said.
The appellant cannot be convicted for his demeanour of asking or requesting the crew members for using the lavatory of the aircraft, and also for inquiring as to whether the aircraft will go to Delhi or not, the court said.
“The crew members have also admitted that there were other passengers in the business class. These witnesses have also not denied the use of lavatory by other passengers. They have not seen the accused planting the note in the lavatory. As per the deposition of PW-22,he had identified 4-5 accused. The crew members have also admitted that there were other passengers in the business class,” the court noted.
It concluded that the evidence should have been of immaculate character, keeping in mind the stringent punishment prescribed for the offence of hijacking under the Act, it added while setting aside the conviction and sentence handed down by the special NIA court.
The case pertains to October 30, 2017 when the note was found in a Delhi-bound Jet Airways flight. It stated in Urdu that the flight must not land in Delhi, but was to be taken directly to ‘Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir’ (PoK). It threatened that if the flight landed anywhere other than PoK, then 12 men on board the flight would kill the passengers.
The High Court conceded that the communication of ‘intention’ to inflict harm or loss on a person which may diminish his/her freedom to act voluntarily, could be termed as a “credible threat.”
A threat to an individual who is onboard a flight at a high altitude will have an ‘alarming and horrifying’ effect, the judges said, adding that the credibility of the threat at that moment is impossible to assess.
It further held that the effect of a threat cannot diminish later just because it turned out to be a hoax.
“Merely, because a threat is subsequently found to be a hoax, the same cannot wipe out its effect at the time when such threat was issued or as in the present case, the aspect of threat was detected from the Note which was found from the lavatory of the aircraft. Threat is entirely subjective, metaphysically incongruous and statutorily undefined.”
The court also refused to accept the contention of the appellant that the flight was not actually hijacked, and thus, merely issuing a threat-note would not amount to hijacking the aircraft physically.
Senior Advocates Yogesh Lakhani and Vikram Chaudhari along with Advocates Hardik P Modh, Rishi Segal, Amit Laddha and Shweta Segal appeared for the appellant.
Additional Public Prosecutor Vrunda C Shah represented the State.
Additional Solicitor General Devang Vyas along with Advocate Kshitij Amin represented the NIA.
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