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.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS