Story of their Assassins continues ………….

I told the airhostess who I was and that I needed to alight and make an urgent official call. She informed me that Delhi- bound passengers were not permitted to disembark. I then told her I needed to see the captain and gave her my CBI visiting card. Within a minute she was back to inform me that the captain wanted to see me in the cockpit immediately.

I told the captain that I had an urgent message to convey to my fellow officers in Delhi and I needed to make a call immediately. Both the captain and I carried mobile phones but mobile telephony had not yet come to Ranchi. He permitted me to disembark and assured me that the flight would wait for me. I quickly got off the aircraft and ran to the terminal building. To my surprise, there was not a soul to be seen there. Ours was the last flight to leave Ranchi, and once the last passengers had left the terminal to board the flight to Delhi, all ground staff deployed at the airport had left.

I ran around the terminal building like a mad man. Thankfully, I noticed a man in uniform with Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF; the Central Industrial Security Force [CISF] had not taken over airport security at Ranchi yet) shoulder tabs. I rushed up to him, introduced myself and said that I needed to make an urgent call. He took me to the CRPF office, which was located within the terminal building. I rang up Rajbir Singh and excitedly informed him that it was MS and an associate of his who were travelling on my flight. I also shared with him their seat numbers.

The standard operating procedure followed by law enforcement agencies when they have to pick up somebody from an aircraft is that the captain is informed beforehand through air traffic control not to commence disembarkation until the agency officers enter the aircraft, locate the person to be picked up and leave with their quarry.

To be continued ………….