Centre slams X for 'abetting crime'

New Delhi: The Union government on Wednesday came down heavily on the officials of X for not sharing the details of the suspicious accounts that were allegedly involved in issuing hoax bomb threats to airlines.

After a series of hoax bomb threats to domestic and international flights over the past few days, the Central government pulled up social media giant X, for its handling of the situation and said that it amounted to "abetting crime".

The sharp words by the Centre came during a virtual meeting that was called by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology with officials of Airlines and social media platforms-- X and Meta.

The Centre pulled up the microblogging site after the Delhi Police failed to get the details of the user's ID or domain of a few X accounts that were found to be involved in posting threat messages to flights.

In the last eight days, over 90 domestic and international flights have received hoax bomb threats, leading to a serious security situation.

The affected flights include services from Akasa, Air India, IndiGo and Vistara, operating from Delhi to various domestic and international destinations.

The Delhi Police has filed eight cases in connection with bomb threats, and according to a senior police official, the threats messages were received through anonymous posts on X which were later suspended by the authorities.

"As of now, we have registered eight separate cases in response to threats to more than 90 domestic or international flights operating from Delhi," a Delhi Police official said. The first case was registered on October 16 following a bomb threat received via X, targeting a Bengaluru-bound Akasa Air flight. "It was suspected that the handler used VPN (Virtual private network) or dark web browser to set up the accounts on X and then posted the messages from more than one account," the officer said.