SEPANG, March 14 — Putrajaya said again today it has not ruled out hijacking as a possible cause behind the disappearance of Flight 370 as new leads suggest the plane may have been intentionally made to shift its course.

Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein refused to confirm the speculation but said Malaysian authorities are not ruling out the possibility that the Boeing 777-20ER bound for Beijing and carrying 239 people on board may have been hijacked.

“We are not ruling that out,” said Hishammuddin when asked to confirm new information that points towards a possible hijacking of the plane.

Military radar-tracking evidence suggests the Malaysia Airlines jetliner missing for nearly a week was deliberately flown across the Malay peninsula towards the Andaman Islands, sources familiar with the investigation told Reuters yesterday.

Two sources said an unidentified aircraft that investigators believe was Flight MH370 was following a route between navigational waypoints — indicating it was being flown by someone with aviation training — when it was last plotted on military radar off the country’s northwest coast.

Hishammuddin today reiterated that the probe into the possible hijacking angle is based on the profile of each passenger and crew listed on the manifest of the missing plane.

Malaysia's acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Tun Hussein takes questions from journalists during a news conference about the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport March 14, 2014. — Picture by Saw Siow Feng

He repeated the statement by inspector-general of police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar that the profiling of each passenger and crew member will include psychological and personal evaluation, and is still ongoing.