Kathmandu, Apr.6:Indian Airlines has requested Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) to introduce additional security measures, within the parameters of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), at the Tribhuvan International Airport for the resumption of the Indian Airlines flights, Manoj Kumar Bharati, First Secretary at the Indian Embassy, here has said.

“Such security measures have nothing to do with Nepal’s sovereignty,” clarified Bharati. “Such measures have already been made available to many international airlines in Indian airports and many international airports also have such facilities.”

He further added that India was ready to provide facilities like secondary check and passenger frisking for Royal Nepal Airlines Corporation (RNAC) or any other Nepalese airlines flying into India if they seek for such arrangements.

After holding talks for five days last week on the resumption of the Indian Airlines flights, Nepal and India decided to meet again within few weeks. Officials here involved in the talks said that the meeting agreed on many issues while few of them were yet to be refined. Neither of the sides – each headed by Nepalese and Indian civil aviation joint secretaries – elaborated on the discussed issues even after the talks held here were over.

The Indian team arrived here three months after Indian Airlines suspended its inbound flights since December 24 last year when IC 814 was hijacked in the Indian aerospace around half an hour after it took off from the TIA. The scheduled passenger carrier with above 160 passengers hopped to several airports in the region reaching as far as the Middle East the same day it was hijacked.

The following day the Indian Airlines Airbus reached Kandahar in Afghanistan where it remained captured by the hijackers for seven days. Having killed one Indian passenger earlier and having freed more than 20 passengers, most of them ladies and children, the hijackers freed the remaining passengers on the eighth day in exchange of three prisoners in India.

Even if Indian airlines had suspended its inbound flights citing security reasons at TIA after the IC 814 hijack, a high level investigation commission formed by the government has made it clear that there was no security lapse at the country’s only international airport on the day when the hijack took place.