A dummy grenade shell found on Tuesday night during luggage screening at the cargo terminal triggered a security scare at the Indira Gandhi International Airport.
The dummy grenade was found in a postal bag around 8 p.m. on Tuesday during a routine X-ray check of outbound parcel and
baggage. The packet was noticed in cargo export section.
The cargo was part of Air India's Delhi-London-New York flight (AI-111). "The Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad (BDDS) was called in immediately, who as a precautionary measure, kept the bag along with grenade in the cooling pit," said an airport official who didn't wish to be named.
The bag was taken out of the cooling pit and opened on Wednesday morning. "The grenades were actually replicas with no explosive inside them," he said.
The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security is enquiring into the incident, a civil aviation ministry spokeswoman said.
"We have been informed about the dummy grenade found in cargo on Tuesday evening. A case will be registered after we examine the seized item," said O.P. Mishra, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Airport). According to sources the empty shell has been sent for the forensic examination and a team has been sent to the address written on the parcel.
In a similar incident in March this year, crackers were found in the cargo hold of a Bangalore-Thiruvananthapuram King-fisher flight on arrival at the Thiruvananthapuram airport.