Recently, Ryan Air Flight FR 4978, en route from Athens, Greece, to Vilnius, Lithuania, was forced to divert to Minsk while travelling over Belarussian airspace. Subsequently, Roman Protasevich, journalist and Belarussian dissident, and his partner, Sofia Sapega, were detained by the authorities. In this piece, Akshay Luhadia and Saiesh Kamath from NUJS, Kolkata, analyse Belarus’s legal obligations under the 1971 Montreal Convention and the 1944 Chicago Convention. They also argue for possible recourse and sanctions against Belarus in this present case of aviation piracy.