Dealing with hijacking

Dealing with hijacking

Context:

India had repealed Anti-Hijacking Act of 1982 in 2016

The need for new stricter law:

• The hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 in 1999 and the 9/11 attacks in the U.S., in which aircraft were used as missiles, made India realize that it needs to tighten the 1982 anti-hijacking law.
• The need was also felt to make hijacking punishable with death penalty.
• The government felt that the Anti-Hijacking Act of 1982 had insufficient penalties and was not comprehensive enough to deal with new challenges.

Highlights of the Anti-Hijacking Act, 2016

• The Anti-Hijacking Act, 2016 repealed the 1982 Act.
• Its objectives are in accordance to the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft.
• The Act further incorporated the September 2010 Beijing Protocol Supplementary to the Convention which specifically dealt with “unlawful acts against civil aviation by new types of threats”.
• The Act highlighted the government’s concern for expedient measures to be taken during hostile acts of seizure or exercise of control of aircraft which jeopardise the safety of persons and property.
• The new law revamped Section 3 of the 1982 legislation to expand the definition of hijacking to seizure or takeover of an aircraft using “any technological means”.
• The law takes into consideration the possibility that a hijacker need not be physically present inside the aircraft to take control of it. According to the Act, even a credible “threat” to hijack an aircraft amounts to hijacking.
• The definition of ‘hijacking’ further includes an attempt to commit the crime, abetting, organising, participating in it as an accomplice, and unlawfully and intentionally assisting a person involved in hijacking to evade investigation or prosecution or punishment.
• Section 4 of the Act allows capital punishment if the hijacking leads to the death of a hostage, a security personnel, or any person not involved in the offence. The alternative is life imprisonment.
• According to the Act, an aircraft is considered to be “in-service” from the beginning of its pre-flight preparation by ground personnel or crew for a specific flight until 24 hours after “any landing”.