India seeks to clear slums near Mumbai airport amid terror fears

[NEW DELHI] India's federal government has asked officials in Mumbai for a plan to evict 90,000 slum dwellers living around the airport after terrorist attacks on airfields in Pakistan, a person familiar with the proposal said.

The Civil Aviation Minister has written to the Maharashtra state government asking it to relocate and rehouse those living by the airport, according to a ministry official, who asked not to be identified as the information isn't public. The security threat to the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport from the slum is grave, the official said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government is looking at terror threats to aviation more closely after the Taliban attacked Karachi's airport in early June killing 36 people and later that month gunmen fired on a plane coming to land in Peshawar, killing one passenger.