Air Force security personnel held an in-service soldier of the Indian Army who was carrying one round of a live bullet of AK 47 and one fired empty case of INSAS rifle before boarding a flight at the Sambra airport in Belagavi on Saturday.
Karnataka State Industrial Security Force personnel, who frisked Arun Bhosle of Sankeshwar, found that he was carrying in his luggage, these material that are banned on airport premises. After preliminary interrogation, it was found that the resident of Belagavi was going from Belagavi to Bengaluru in an Alliance Air flight in the evening.
From Bengaluru he was planning to go to New Delhi and from there to Jammu and Kashmir where he has been posted as Naik Subedar. He had come home in Sankeshwar for a vacation nearly a month ago.
Security personnel spotted the metal objects when his luggage was screened by the AIRINDIA/AITSL X-BIS Screening Board.
KSISF officers, who belong to the State police, discussed the issue with the airport security officers and decided to hand over the solider to the jurisdictional police station in Marihal. The local staff, after consulting with senior officers, handed him over to the Maratha Light Infantry Regiment Centre Police in the military camp area in Belagavi.
However, a case was not registered in the Marihal Police Station. “We will wait for the military police inquiry report before registering a case,” a city police officer said.
Mr. Bhosle had carried the live bullet and the fired empty case along with him from Jammu to Sankeshwar, but the airport staff in Delhi, Bengaluru and Belagavi had not noticed that during his arrival. “That is, probably, because check-out security is not as strict as check-in security,” he said.
Airport director Rajesh Kumar Mourya has congratulated Irappa Wali, security in-charge, and personnel of the Airport Security Unit, KSISF, the screener and other wings for detecting the prohibited luggage and for detaining the accused.
