A plane that had been grounded in France for days over concerns that its mostly Indian passengers were part of a human trafficking scheme landed in Mumbai early yesterday.
The Airbus A340 had initially been bound for Nicaragua when it was detained on Thursday last week at Vatry airport, east of Paris, where it had stopped for refueling.
It had arrived from Dubai and there was an anonymous tip-off that it was carrying potential victims of human trafficking.
Photo: AP
Of the original 303 people on the passenger list, 276 were on the plane that took off on Monday afternoon, arriving in Mumbai after a nearly nine-hour flight.
A senior airport official, who was not authorized to speak to journalists, confirmed that the flight had landed at 4am on Tuesday.
The arrival of the plane was also shown on aviation tracking Web site Flightradar24.
There was no official Indian statement on the arrival or details of when the passengers would be allowed to leave the airport.
Among those staying behind were two people questioned by French police over suspected human trafficking, but a judicial source said they were released after it was established that the passengers had boarded the plane of their own free will.
The French authorities are continuing to investigate the case for potential immigration law contraventions, but no longer for human trafficking, judicial sources said.
The suspects’ release came because “the investigating judge was able to resist media pressure in this case,” said their lawyer, Salome Cohen.
The pair have received an expulsion order from France, their lawyers said.
The other 25 people have sought asylum in France, five of whom are minors, the prefecture said.
Their applications are to be processed at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.
After questioning the passengers for two days, French prosecutors on Sunday gave the go-ahead for the plane to leave.
A source close to the inquiry said that the Indians were likely workers in the United Arab Emirates who had been bound for Nicaragua, which they intended to use as a jumping-off spot for the US or Canada.
The passengers of the flight, operated by Romanian company Legend Airlines, were put up at the airport during the investigation. Beds, toilets and showers were installed, the local prefecture said, while police prevented journalists and outsiders from entering the airport.
The passengers included 11 unaccompanied minors, Paris prosecutors said.
The Indian embassy in Paris on Monday wrote on X that it was grateful for the “quick resolution” of the incident.
The authorization for the plane to leave came after a French court ruled that any further detention of three of the passengers would be illegal.
However, Genevieve Colas, coordinator at the Secours Catholique-Caritas association, said that the release of the plane had “surprised” her.
“What if they really are victims of people trafficking?” she asked. “Then it wouldn’t be right to just let them take off to another country.”
The 30 crew members were not detained. Some had handled the Dubai-Vatry leg, while others were to take over for the flight to Managua. The use of charter flights to aid migrants in getting to their dream destination “is a relatively new phenomenon,” Manuel Orozco, director of migration issues at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, said last month.
Orozco said he believed that airline operators and Nicaraguan airport authorities made “an economic calculation” for their “mutual benefit.”
According to Flightradar24, Legend Airlines has just four planes.
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