Plane held for days in France on trafficking concerns lands in India

276 of the 303 passengers on the Airbus A340 originally bound for Nicaragua took the nearly 9-hour flight to Mumbai

25 others remained in France as asylum seekers, while 2 were questioned by authorities as part of the investigation

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The plane grounded by police at France’s Vatry airport takes off on Monday. Photo: AP

Published: 7:32am, 26 Dec 2023

A plane that had been grounded in France for days over concerns its nearly 300 mostly Indian passengers were part of a human trafficking scheme has landed in Mumbai, flight tracking data showed early Tuesday.

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 3pm on Monday.

It landed at Mumbai’s international airport after a nearly nine-hour flight, just after 4am local time on Tuesday, 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.