The Gujarat High Court bench of Justice AS Supehia and Justice MR Mengedey Acquitted Mumbai based businessman birju kishore salla who was convicted by the NIA court in 2019. He was sentenced of a life imprisonment for the rest of his life.
The court quashed the conviction by the NIA court, life imprisonment and the fine of 5,00,00,000 imposed upon him as the court held that the accused cannot be convicted for the offence of hijacking ‘On the premise of evidence which is tainted with doubt’.
Birju Kishore Salla was convicted due to him reportedly planting a hoax threat letter in the jet aircraft’s bathroom which threatened the flight was infiltrated with hijackers and they would force the flight to be flown to Pakistan owned Kashmir (POK) And if anyone attempts to disrupt the hijack it would lead to the death
of the passengers. The letter further stated that a bomb was planted in the aircrafts cargo area. The node led to the emergency landing of the flight in Ahmedabad instead of landing in Delhi.
According to the NIA’s report Salla had planted such a letter in an attempt to persuade his girlfriend who was then working with the Jet Airways in Delhi to return back to him in Mumbai, Salla hoped that the letter in question would force the Jet Airways to shut its Delhi operations and this would lead to his girlfriend to return to Mumbai.
The NIA court convicted Salla under the sections 3(1), 3(2)(a) and 4(b) Of the anti hijacking act 2016 and sentenced him with life imprisonment for the rest of his life of ₹5,00,00,000 was imposed out of which each pilot was to get compensation of 1,00,000, each air Hostess with ₹50,000 and each passenger was to be paid with ₹25,000 for the misery they had to go through. Salla moved a plea of appeal to the High court challenging the conviction by NIA.
The High Court in its judgement added that the loss faced by Salla should be refunded that is, the fine imposed should be refunded if paid, the crew members were directed to refund the amount of compensation received by them back to Salla, the release of Salla’s seized properties if any etc.
The court further stated that ‘Merely because threat is subsequently found to be a hoax, it can’t wipe out its effect at the time when such threat was issued or as in present case, such threat was detected from the note found in the lavatory of the aircraft’.
Written by: Abhirami Sudheer Elayadath , College: Government Law College, Kozhikode, Kerala , Semester: 4th semester of 3year LLB an intern under Legal Vidhiya ,
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