Hijackers seize jetliner with up to 54 on board

An Indian airliner with up to 54 people on board was hijacked tonight during a domestic flight from Bombay to New Delhi.

The Alliance Air Boeing 737 landed safely at Indira Gandhi International Airport and was taken to a separate bay where it was surrounded by armed commandos and police.

There were reported to be two hijackers on board who have demanded the jet be flown to Lucknow, in the northern Indian province of Uttar Pradesh.

All the passengers and crew are believed to be safe and the pilots have asked for two engineers to come on board.

India’s Civil Aviation Minister Sharad Yadav said authorities received an anonymous call after the plane left Bombay saying the plane had been hijacked after its departure.

The pilot contacted air traffic controllers in New Delhi while the plane was flying over Ahmadabad, north of Bombay, he said.

Navdeep Suri, spokesman for the Indian High Commission in London, said it was not known if the incident was connected with the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

He said: ‘‘The security forces are obviously meeting to decide on the best course of action. We are just watching the situation.’’

But an expert on Indian politics said the hijackers could be Kashmiri militants with links to the Taliban.

They were responsible for a similar hijacking in 1999 of an Indian Airlines plane which took off from Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital, with 178 passengers and 11 crew.

After killing one passenger they ordered the pilot to fly to Afghanistan where they successfully demanded the release of three prisoners from Indian jails.

Sudipta Kaviraj, a specialist in Indian politics from London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, said Kashmiri militants were most likely to be behind tonight’s hijack.

‘‘A hijack would be uncharacteristic of them, but as we have seen from the World Trade Centre attacks, terrorism thrives on a change of tactics and doing something that people don’t expect.’’

Mr Kaviraj said that although there was a highly visible security presence at Indian airports, it was often ‘‘primitive’’ and it would not be very difficult to smuggle weapons on to a plane.

Air safety expert Jonathan Crivon said he was not surprised another plane had been hijacked so soon after the attacks on New York.

The managing director of independent security company Airline Safety And Protection (ASAP) said security had been stepped up worldwide but not enough.

‘‘India is known for being completely lame when it comes to security and obviously at the moment being in that area where you have various terrorist networks operating it would be at more risk because it is more accessible.’’

Alliance Air is a domestic subsidiary of Indian Airlines.

In July last year an Alliance Air Boeing 737 crashed while coming in to land at Patna airport in the northern state of Bihar, killing 57 people.

Among the victims were British doctor Dr Pramond Kumar and his wife Kirin Rajgarhia, from Glasgow. Mrs Rajgarhia was killed instantly and her husband died from his injuries two months later.

Their children - daughter Pratchi, 18, and son Ketan, 13 - survived the crash.