Udupi, Jan 14: It will be a month, on January 15, since the 'Suvarna Tribhuja' boat, from Malpe with seven fishermen onboard, went missing off the Goa coast.
The boat, with seven fishers, including Chandrashekhar Kotian, had left the Malpe fisheries harbour along with about 20 boats for fishing in the deep seas on December 13.
The last communication from it was at 1 a.m. on December 15 when it was in touch with another fishing boat, Vasudeva. As no contact could be made with Suvarna Tribhuja from 5.30 a.m. onwards on December 15, the remaining boats sent wireless messages to other boats. Following which, Nityananda, brother of the missing boat's owner Chandrashekhar Kotian, lodged a complaint with the Malpe police.
Since then, the coastal security, district police, coast guard are making efforts to trace the missing fishermen in Karnataka, Goa, Kerala and Maharashtra. But, they could not gather any clue yet.
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New Delhi, Nov 28: Airlines received 999 hoax bomb threats this year till November 14 and as many as 256 FIRs have been filed while guidelines have been issued by aviation security regulator BCAS for objective assessment of threats, the government said on Thursday.
In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol said a total of 1,148 hoax bomb threat messages/calls have been received since August 2022 till November 14, 2024 threatening the operations of international and domestic air travel.
While 999 threats were received by airlines during the period from January to November 14, 2024, the count stood at 122 last year and at 27 for the August-December 2022 period.
"256 FIRs have been filed since January 2024 till 14 November 2024, out of which 163 FIRs have been filed during 14 October- 14 November 2024. 12 arrests have been made in view of hoax bomb threat since January 2024 till 14 November 2024," the minister said.
The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) has issued guidelines for objective assessment of threats. The indicative factor has been useful in reducing time taken by the Bomb Threat Assessment Committee (BTAC) during the decision-making process.
"Also, to reduce the overall time taken for convening BTAC to less than 5 minutes, virtual assembly of BTAC through pre-generated video link has been set up. Further, advisories for compulsory 10 per cent of secondary ladder point check-in for all flights, strict monitoring of non-scheduled flight operations, enhanced security measures and surveillance at cargo terminals were issued," Mohol said.
Further, the minister said the government is considering amending the Aircraft (Security) Rules, 2023 to put hoax threat messenger in the no-fly list.
"It is also being considered to amend Suppression of Unlawful Acts against Safety of Civil Aviation for covering Aircraft in flight as well as on ground, airport etc," he added.