New Delhi, Oct 6 (Bhaskar News) : Hours after a ‘stun grenade’ was found in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s standby aircraft on Saturday, the government has suspended four Air India officials over negligence.

Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju has suspended four staff including the security heads of the Mumbai and Hyderabad airports for lapses in detecting the dummy stun-grenade.

The Civil Aviation minister also contradicted the reports of state-run carrier’s denial that no lethal object was found in its aircraft.

Raju will also hold a high level meeting with senior officials of the airlines to find out the reasons for the security lapse.

Air India has denied reports of finding any lethal object inside the aircraft by saying that the alleged explosive found in the plane was a plastic wrapper.

Earlier, a diffused stun grenade was found by the cabin crew on the Mumbai-Hyderabad-Jeddah flight at its termination point.

The Boeing 747-400 was on stand-by for use by the Prime Minister in case his regular aircraft developed any last-minute snags during his US visit.

The aircraft was kept in complete readiness at Indira Gandhi International Airport and was released for commercial operations on Friday only after Modi returned to India.

However, when the plane reached Jeddah on the morning of Saturday (IST), a defused grenade was found lying inside the business class of the aircraft.

The plane was then grounded in Jeddah and the local authorities had completely sanitized the aircraft. Investigation were put on to make out how grenade made it inside the aircraft.

AI, which has a total fleet of 108 aircraft, maintains five Boeing 747-400s that are used for VVIP transport like for the Prime Minister or President on state visits.