Mangalore Airport Bomb scare: Suspect deemed 'habitual offender' surrenders before police

Bengaluru, Jan 22: The Bengaluru police have arrested one person two days after an unattended bag with a low-intensity explosive was found at the Mangalore International Airport.

The accused, identified as Aditya Rao, had surrendered before the police. Interrogations with the accused are currently underway.

It is reported that Rao is a habitual offender and was arrested earlier too for making a hoax call to the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) in Bengaluru.

The suspect has been identified as Adithya Rao, a native of Manipal, they said, adding he resembled the one captured on CCTV footage at Mangaluru airport. The suspect confessed to having planted the bomb at the airport, sources said.

Meanwhile, a team of police officials from Mangaluru have arrived in the city to question the suspect. Mangaluru city police commissioner P S Harsha tweeted that the investigation team will question the suspect and will initiate further necessary legal action.

Police sources said, Rao, who was taken to Halsoor Gate police station in Bengaluru for questioning, is an engineering graduate and an MBA holder. He had earlier been arrested for making a hoax bomb call to Bengaluru airport in 2018 and was jailed for six months.

This was an act of revenge as he was denied the job of a security guard at the Bengaluru International Airport which he had applied for due to lack of certain documents, they said. Rao had come to Bengaluru in 2012 seeking a job and landed one in a private bank, which he resigned. He then returned to Mangaluru, where he worked as a security guard for six months and then as a cook in Puthige Mutt in Udupi.

Later, he went back to the state capital and joined an insurance company, which he left and tried to become a security staff at the airport, the sources said. A 'live' explosive device was found in an unattended bag near a ticket counter of the departure gate of the international airport in Mangaluru on Monday and later defused at a nearby open ground.