India Begins Pat-Down Search for Passengers Flying to U.S., U.K.

New Delhi: Passengers taking flights to the U.S., United Kingdom and Europe from any of the international airports in India will now have to face a pat-down search at the airport.
In the pat-down search, the security officer, in India’s case an officer from the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), will run his or her hands over the passenger to detect weapons or other items.
The order is meant only for passengers going to the U.S., U.K. and Europe, while there will be no pat-down search for passengers to other international destinations.
An order to this effect was recently passed by the Ministry of Civil Aviation a few days after a member of the ground staff at the Thiruvananthapuram airport in Kerala was apprehended for planting a crude bomb inside a plane about to take off from the airport. There have been other recent incidents where security at the airport and inside the planes has been compromised.
Speaking to The Indian Express, a senior official in the ministry said that one of the reasons behind introducing the pat-down search at all the international airports was a request from U.S. security agencies that passengers on all West-bound flights, passing over the Middle East, be subjected to this search.
22/04/10 All Headline News

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Categories: Airports Apr 2010, Foreign Apr 2010, Safety Apr 2010