Suspicion points to the pilot

Kuala Lampur: The Malaysian prime minister, for the first time, hinted at foul play. Someone, probably, deliberately diverted the plane from its flight path from Kuala Lampur to Beijing. A member of the Royal Malaysian Police has confirmed that a flight simulator was recovered from the flight captain’s home. The simulator is being analysed by experts.

Meanwhile, the Malaysian authorities have confirmed that the pilot spoke to air traffic control after a signalling system was disabled on the jet, without referring to any trouble. This comes even as suspicions grow of possible pilot complicity and fears of a possible hijack. In this context, Malaysia’s SOS to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assumes significance.

Headlines Today claimed the Malaysian trail made the captain suspect. Here is what it reported:

A behavioural change in Captain Zaharie is too glaring to be ignored. The captain normally wished the Nepali security guards posted outside his colony with a Muslim style of salutation as if he was saying salam to him. But on the night when he took the flight nine days ago, he had saluted the guards in the military style.

“There was a striking change in the way he had saluted us that night,” said one of the security guards posted outside his house on condition of anonymity, adding, ”It was very unlike him.”

Another abnormal thing noticed that night was he used his own BMW 5 series car to go to the airport to take the flight that night. Normally he used to take the airline cab for going to airport for doing international flights. His cab had arrived at his colony gates almost twenty minutes after he had left for the airport.

Another interesting angle that night was that he was accompanied by his wife in his BMW car at around 9 pm. Interestingly,[ST1]  his wife did not return home that night. She only returned to the house on Saturday morning almost a week after the suspected hijack.  Sources said she returned to the house at 10 am.

Some media reports suggested Capt Zaharie had affiliation with the leader of opposition, Anwar Ibrahim, who had been convicted on charges of sodomy. It is said that the Capt had also attended proceedings of the trial.

Malaysian investigators are also looking into the role of other crew members, including co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid. Social media show him with two unauthorised females in the cockpit.