Indian flight lands in Pakistan's Karachi due to technical problem

A passenger plane of India's Indigo airlines has been diverted to the Pakistani city of Karachi due to a "technical defect".

Sunday's flight was to fly to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates from the southern city of Hyderabad, according to local news agencies.

"After the pilot of the Sharjah-Hyderabad flight observed a technical defect in the aircraft, as a precaution the aircraft was diverted to Karachi, Pakistan," Reuters local TV partner ANI said in a tweet, quoting the airline.

This is the second such case this month, in which an Indian passenger flight was diverted to Pakistan.

SpiceJet said on July 5 a Boeing 737 aircraft from New Delhi to Dubai made an emergency landing in Karachi due to a fuel indicator light malfunctioning, prompting the airlines watchdog to issue a warning notice.

IndiGo was dispatching an additional flight to Karachi to bring passengers back to Hyderabad, ANI said.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Presently, there are no direct flights operating between India and Pakistan, as relations between the two countries plummeted to a new low after August 2019, when India scrapped the longstanding special status of Jammu and Kashmir, resulting in Islamabad downgrading its diplomatic ties with New Delhi.

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