Weekly The Generation, Year 1, Issue 17
December 26, 2023
A plane that had been grounded in France for days over concerns its roughly 300 mostly Indian passengers were part of a human trafficking scheme landed in Mumbai early Tuesday, flight tracking data showed.
The Airbus A340 initially had been bound for Nicaragua when it was detained last Thursday at Vatry airport, east of Paris, where it had stopped for refuelling.
It had arrived from Dubai and there was an anonymous tip-off that it was carrying potential victims of human trafficking.
Of the original 303 people on the passenger list, 276 were on the plane that took off just before 3:00 pm (1400 GMT) Monday.
It landed at Mumbai’s international airport after a nearly nine-hour flight, just after 4:00 am local time Tuesday (2230 GMT Monday), aviation tracking website Flightradar24 showed.
Among the passengers staying behind were two people questioned by French police over suspected people trafficking, but a judicial source said police released them after establishing that the 303 passengers had boarded the plane of their own free will.
The French authorities are continuing to investigate the case for violation of immigration laws, but no longer for potential people trafficking, judicial sources said.
Source: AFP, Mumbai
