A United Arab Emirates air force plane bound for China is being held in Kolkata, India after the pilot admitted it was carrying undeclared arms and ammunition. From Bloomberg:
The aircraft landed in the eastern city of Kolkata yesterday for refueling on its way to Hanyang, part of the city of Wuhan in China’s Hubei province, Mahesh Kaul, director of Kolkata’s airport, said in a telephone interview from the city.
Crew members informed customs officers checking the plane that it was carrying arms that had not been declared when permission to transit India was requested, Kaul said. The flight began in Abu Dhabi
“They will not be allowed to fly until the investigation is over,” Kaul said, without giving further details of the cargo aboard the plane.
A report from India Today has more details:
The defence ministry on Monday sought a clarification from the UAE over one of its air force aircraft that had been stopped at the Kolkata airport after it was found to be carrying weapons and explosives.
The ministry got in touch with the UAE embassy to check on the China-bound aircraft. Nine crew members of the plane were interrogated at Kolkata’s Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport.
The Indian Air Force (IAF), Kolkata Police and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) officials interrogated the captain and his eight colleagues. On Sunday evening, the crew was deplaned as the aircraft made an emergency landing for refuelling.
Kolkata’s Telegraph has a report that offers one possible explanation for the failure of the crew to declare the arms aboard:
Indian Air Force intelligence officials from Eastern Command joined the Security Control Organisation in grilling the crew members — all of them UAE air force personnel led by Major Ibrahim Samsi — for hours this evening, trying to find out if their failure to declare the weapons was deliberate.
A source suggested it could be a freak error. The UAE ambassador to India is in Dubai because of a UAE tradition of calling back all its ambassadors world-wide during Ramazan for consultations.
A local employee filled out the form handed to India’s civil aviation authorities about the aircraft, and he probably did not understand the implications of a mis-declaration and its consequences. It’s possible, the source said, that he did not know what the cargo was.
The UAE ambassador has been constantly on the phone with Delhi and with Abu Dhabi, where the UAE air force is headquartered, with the Indian ambassador too interceding with Delhi.
