Bomb threat at Agra's Kheria Airport turns out to be hoax

AGRA: Agra’s Kheria Airport, which serves as a civil aviation facility as well as a base station for the Air Force, received a bomb threat via email on Monday, prompting a thorough search of the premises.

The email, sent to CISF, claimed that a bomb was placed in the airport’s bathroom.

“An email was received by the manager of Indigo Airlines at about 11.56am on Monday that a bomb was placed in the airport’s bathroom. The premises were searched, but nothing suspicious was found,” said assistant commissioner of police Mayank Tiwari.

A police complaint was lodged at Shahganj police station under relevant sections of the BNS and IT Act. Agra airport director Yogendra Singh Tomar confirmed that the search took two hours but yielded no results. Efforts to trace the email’s origin are ongoing.

This is not the first such incident at Kheria Airport. Similar hoax emails were received on October 4 and July 30, the latter involving threats to both the airport and Cantt Railway Station with explosives. Investigations led to an arrest in the July case, but the October sender remains unidentified.

Currently, Kheria Airport operates flights to three cities: Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad. The average occupancy rate for all three flights is 94%.

On December 3, an email threatening to bomb the Taj Mahal sparked a high-security alert at the monument, forcing its temporary closure and detailed inspections. The mail received by the regional office of the UP tourism department, Agra, was later confirmed as a hoax.