‘Bomb’ of Bombay Causes Scare at Brisbane Airport

A bag with the word “bomb” written on it caused an emergency situation at Brisbane international airport in Australia on April 4, the SBS website reported. The bag, which had “Bomb to Brisbane” written on it, was spotted at the baggage carousel.

A witness told Yahoo News that until the police came to the international terminal, she had treated the entire thing as a joke.“The area was cordoned [off] and we were quickly ushered away from it,” she said.

A photograph of the bag supplied to Yahoo 7 News showed a white paper put on the black bag that read, “Bomb to Brisbane.” Below it was written “Mumbai” — the Indian metropolis that was known as Bombay until 1995. The international airport code for Mumbai is BOM — where the bag was supposedly from. The owner of the bag boarded the plane from the Indian city to Brisbane.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers were at the scene of the incident as soon as they were alerted but soon determined that there was no danger to the public, SBS reported. “The Australian Federal Police responded to reports of a suspicious item of baggage at Brisbane International Airport yesterday [Wednesday],” an AFP spokesperson told SBS Punjabi. “An area near a baggage carousel was cordoned off and the item was examined in accordance with routine protocols, and was not deemed to be suspicious.”

This is not the first time the IATA code for Mumbai airport — “BOM” — caused a bomb scare.

In December last year, a Virginia-based CEO of Indian origin was arrested for allegedly making a hoax call about a bomb at the Mumbai International Airport. Vinod Moorjani, 45, told the court that all he wanted was to know the status of a “Bom-Del” flight. According to him, his query was misunderstood by the telephone operator of the toll-free number of Mumbai airport as “bomb hai (there is bomb)”.

In 2016, a Jet Airways flight from Ahmedabad to Mumbai was delayed by three and a half hours after a torn boarding pass with “bomb” written was found in the magazine pouch in the flight. More than 125 passengers were asked to deboard the plane, the Times of India had earlier reported. The police and the bomb disposal squad, which searched the aircraft, found out from the passenger on the seat that the “B” next to BOM (denoting Mumbai) was for his boarding gate, 47B. It was written for his reference by the agent at the check-in counter.