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A bizarre four-hour 'hijack' involving an Alliance Air Boeing 737 with 52 people on board ended peacefully early on Thursday morning, after an embarrassed government blamed 'false alarm' for the comedy of errors that kept Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the country's top security establishment on tenterhooks during the night.
The flight that left Bombay at 11.15 pm on Wednesday night on its way to Delhi was declared 'hijacked' over Ahmedabad and landed shortly before 1 am amidst full security and emergency drill at Delhi airport.
Three hours later, all passengers went home unharmed from the 'hijack' that never was.
As relatives of passengers on board rushed to the airport on hearing the news from television networks that brought live the coverage, the government's Crisis Management Group assembled under the chairmanship of Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani at 2.15 am.
Woken up from their sleep, Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Hussain, National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra, Foreign Secretary Chokila Iyer as well as defence and home secretaries and top intelligence bosses raced to the meeting.
In the end it was discovered that there had been a miscommunication between the Air Traffic Controller at Ahmedabad and the pilot of the flight CD 7444 of Alliance Air, a subsidiary of Indian Airlines.
The Ahmedabad ATC had received an anonymous call that the flight would be hijacked, which then informed Captain Ashwani Bahal that the flight had been hijacked.
The pilot locked the cockpit believing that the hijackers were in the passenger cabin.
He brought the plane to Delhi and parked it at an isolated bay where it was surrounded by National Security Guard commandos, who eventually deflated the aircraft tyre and stormed it after three hours to find no hijackers.
Hussain stoutly denied persistent reports that the entire drama was a mock exercise intended to test all systems in the event of a real hijack.
He also said he had no information that NSG commandos had seized two knife-wielding passengers, trying to scotch rumours to that effect.
The 'hijack' kept Vajpayee awake till 4 in the morning, as he monitored the situation with ministers and officials.
Hussain promised an enquiry into the entire episode, but drew satisfaction from the fact that the system had been quickly activated as in the case of an emergency.
Despite the minister's categorical statement, a variety of rumours about the incident refused to die down.
Some passengers said it all began with a quarrel between two passengers one of whom sought to enter the cockpit.
He reportedly said that he was a government official.
This triggered the hijack alarm, according to that version.
It was a truly a bizarre situation as journalists at the Delhi airport and TV anchors calling passengers in the 'hijacked' aircraft on mobile phones to find out how the situation was inside only to be told everything was 'peaceful, calm and comfortable'.
Most passengers spoken to did not know of the 'hijack', as they had been told that they were being held because of a mechanical defect.
Meanwhile, Civil Aviation Secretary A H Jung added to the confusion when he said on television that there were two hijackers who spoke 'a little English'.
He did not know how they had hijacked the plane except that 'they have something in their hands, which was menacing enough to force a hijack'.
The bizarre drama was brought to an end when Advani talked to the pilot and the passengers were 'ordered' to be let off.
RELATED REPORTS: Alliance Air Bombay-Delhi flight hijacked Crisis Management Group meeting in progress Govt for quick end to hijack drama Passengers unaware of plane being hijacked
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