Mumbai bizman to appeal against life sentence in hijack hoax case

Acquittal, asking for benefit of the doubt will be focus of appeal: Birju Salla’s lawyer

After Mumbai-based businessman Birju Kishore Salla, 38, became the first person to be sentenced to life imprisonment under the amended Anti-Hijacking Act, his family said he will appeal against the sentence in two weeks.

Birju Salla was sentenced to life imprisonment and a fine of ₹5 crore (HT Photo)

On October 30, 2017, Salla had planted a letter in the lavatory of a Mumbai-Delhi flight operated by Jet Airways. In it, he had claimed the flight was “covered by hijackers” and there was a bomb in the cargo area. After the letter was discovered, the flight made an emergency landing in Ahmedabad where Salla confessed the threat was a hoax, planted as revenge for a bad breakfast and in hopes that the airline would stop its Delhi operations because his girlfriend, a Jet Airways employee, had been transferred to the capital.

On Tuesday, a special National Investigation Agency court sentenced Salla to life imprisonment and fined him ₹5 crore (to be distributed among the crew and customers as compensation). Salla has also been added to the national no-fly list. Representing Salla, advocate Rohit Verma said, “Acquittal and/or asking for the benefit of the doubt to Salla will be the focus in the first appeal. We will go for first appeal in a fortnight.”