A chief executive officer of a technology firm in the United States was arrested at the Mumbai airport on Monday for allegedly making a hoax call about a bomb, after he called a helpline number and asked for the status of the “BOM-DEL” flight, The Times of India reported.

Vinod Moorjani, a US citizen of Indian origin, was at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai with his wife and two children. They were to fly to Delhi, and then take another flight from Delhi to Rome before returning home to Virginia. But, bad weather had delayed several flights in and out of Mumbai.

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On Monday, Moorjani’s lawyer told a court that the CEO had made a call to a toll-free number linked to the airport’s control room at 2.30 pm to find out the status of the flight. He asked the operator for the “BOM-DEL status”, the abbreviation used to refer to the Mumbai-Delhi route. The operator asked him what he meant, but Moorjani disconnected. The operator said she heard Moorjani say “bomb hai” before hanging up. She alerted the authorities.

Around 4.30 pm, Moorjani and his family were offloaded from the flight to Delhi. He was arrested two hours later, produced in court on Monday and released on a bail of Rs 15,000.

Moorjani maintains he only asked for the flight status, but the operator misunderstood. The police, however, told the court that Moorjani made the hoax call to disrupt schedules, the newspaper reported.

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This is not the first time that the “BOM” abbreviation has led to a bomb scare.

In April 2016, a Jet Airways flight from Ahmedabad to Mumbai was delayed after a cleaner found a torn boarding pass with “bomb” scribbled on it. Around 125 passengers who had already boarded the flight were asked to disembark. The passenger whose boarding pass it was later told the police that the letter B was probably scribbled next to “BOM” by the agent at the check-in counter, as he had asked her for the gate number.