Youth feeding birds near Mumbai airport sets alarm bells ringing

The incident came to light after a flyer shot a video of the boy from the aircraft and tweeted it. Airport sources said that soon after the tweet, the director-general of civil aviation asked for a report and reached out to the airport security and city police

Mumbai: In an incident that does not bode well for aircraft safety, the Saki Naka police on Tuesday apprehended a youngster who was feeding kites and pigeons on a hillock close to the Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL). Birds are a known hazard to aircraft, and the hillock is located next to an area where the aircraft taxi and align themselves on the runway for take-off.

Youth feeding birds near Mumbai airport sets alarm bells ringing

The incident came to light after a flyer shot a video of the boy from the aircraft and tweeted it. Airport sources said that soon after the tweet, the director-general of civil aviation asked for a report and reached out to the airport security and city police. “Our team, along with the airport wildlife hazard management team, went to the spot and identified the person,” said the airport source. “As per Rule 91 of the Aircraft Rules, slaughtering and flaying of animals and depositing of rubbish and other polluted or obnoxious matter in the vicinity of an aerodrome is prohibited and a punishable offence.”

A senior officer of the Central Industrial Security Force said that the hillock where the incident happened was creating a lot of problems for the airport. “There is a religious structure on it, where people go and sit,” he said. “We have tried our level best to get this structure removed and the area completely sanitised, but to no avail. This hillock gives an unrestricted view of the airport, and the activities of a lot of people who come here are a public nuisance.”

Among the people who visit the hillock are plane-watchers who photograph aircraft. There are also groups that go there to feed meat to the kites—the airport authorities have for long been highlighting the illegal poultry and meat shops in the area, the waste of which attracts crows and kites. There is a small chowky of the Saki Naka police on the hillock, but it is not manned on a 24/7 basis. Airport sources said that there were bird scarers—whose job it is to burst crackers and drive birds away—inside the airport, but they had no control outside.

Balwant Deshmukh, senior inspector at the Saki Naka police station, said that the youngster who was feeding the pigeons told the cops that they were his pets. “We let him off with a warning,” he said. “He told us that he would sell all the pigeons.”