Dummy grenade on Air India jet: NSG to revise counter-hijack method

Manesar, Haryana: In the backdrop of recovery of a dummy grenade in an Air India plane, the NSG on Thursday said it will “revise” its operating procedures for counter-hijack exercises in stationary aircraft and will use a separate “cleaning” team with commandos tasked for the drill exercises. National Security Guard chief Jayanto N Choudhury told reporters here that among the new steps to be implemented in the future will be an essential practise of taking a separate “cleaning” team of the airline with the commandos tasked for the drill exercises. The NSG uses civilian aircrafts, parked after regular duties, to train its special commando units in counter-hijack drills and it signs a undertaking with the airline that the force will not use any live arms and ammunition inside the aircraft and return it back intact. [caption id=“attachment_453836” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational Image. Reuters[/caption] “The said incident occurred on the night of September 26 when our commandos were undertaking a similar counter-hijack drill and hence dummy grenades and other items were used,” the DG said. “Our aim is to neutralise the hijackers…about cleaning the aircraft that could be a weakness (of commandos). Next time there will be a separate party with the Air India to clean the plane. During actual operations we don’t clean the aircraft and hence they would have left it (inside the plane). “In this case it (dummy grenade) got stuck into a seat.” It was missed. So, as far as we are concerned we are taking steps and hope it will not happen again. In future what we thought is that we will do it jointly with whatever airline allows us the plane (to use for drills),” Choudhury told reporters on the sidelines of the NSG Raising Day celebrations here. He, however, said the incident has put other airlines on the back foot and they may now hesitate to lend a stationary aircraft to them for exercise. “That (getting a plane) is another issue now. We have to go back and request them (other airlines) to lease their planes because this incident has put them (airlines) all a bit into defensive,” he said. The DG defended his troops who conducted the said exercise saying they were “master commandos” but not “master cleaners.” “Hence, you see it (dummy grenade) was left behind,” he quipped. Describing the incident, the DG said the NSG has extended the exercise time for three more hours in the night after informing the AI and the dummy grenades were used by commandos to simulate real incidents. The dummy grenade, which had no explosive in it but had BSF factory markings, was found on the upper deck business class of Boeing 747-400, which was operating flight AI-965 on Mumbai-Hyderabad-Jeddah route. Once the dummy grenade was spotted, the aircraft was sanitised and taken to a remote bay and checked by local security personnel and then was granted operational clearance. The NSG has also submitted a report in this regard to the Union Home Ministry some days back where it chronicled the same facts. Dummy grenades, tear smoke grenades and refills for use by police forces are made at BSF’s factory-cum-academy at Tekanpur in Madhya Pradesh. The discovery of the dummy grenade was made when just before landing in Jeddah, a box, wrapped in plastic, rolled out from beneath one of the business class seats. Seeing this, the cabin crew immediately informed the pilot who later informed the Jeddah air traffic control. PTI