Two passengers detained over ‘bomb joke’ on Karachi-bound flight

In a bizarre incident, two passengers were detained on Tuesday after they cracked a joke about a “bomb” while travelling on a flight from Islamabad to Karachi.

According to sources, the Karachi-bound private airline was stopped on suspicion of a bomb with passengers being offloaded from the plane and thoroughly searched. The detained passengers, who were friends, told the flight attendant that they were joking, the sources added.

However, Airports Security Force (ASF) offloaded both of them and took them in custody. Due to the incident, the flight from Islamabad to Karachi was reportedly delayed for three-and-a-half hours.

In a similar incident, a British passenger faced a penalty of up to $24,500 after he said that “he was going to blow up the plane” while on his way to the island of Menorca. However, his message on Snapchat was picked up by the UK security services who alerted the Spanish authorities, asking them to scramble two Spanish fighter jets to follow the plane. Aditya Verma, who was 18 at the time, was taken into custody and was jailed for two days after being released on bail. He told the court it was a “joke in a private group setting”. “It was just sent to my friends I was travelling with on the day,” he said.