A 25-year-old pilot has been arrested by the Delhi Police Crime Branch for allegedly procuring his pilot licence using forged documents.
Acting on a tip-off, a Crime Branch team arrested Dipak Daulat Asatkar, a resident of Andheri (West) in Mumbai, on Friday. He was wanted in connection with a case of obtaining Airlines Transport Pilot Licence (ATPL) on forged documents. He was absconding for the past six months.
Dipak earned his Commercial Pilot Licence (CPL) from the United States in 2008 after completing 250 hours of flying at the Orlando Flying School. He then returned to India and applied for conversion of his commercial licence to Indian CPL in 2009. But he could not get the licence for more than two months. Meanwhile, Dipak came in contact with Captain Pradeep Tyagi through one of his contacts and the latter helped him procure the licence through his contacts in the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
The Crime Branch team has so far smashed four modules and arrested 13 pilots, three DGCA officials and five middlemen. Four pilots — Bhupinder Singh, Captain Ali, Ravish Bhadana and Manoj Dhaka — are still absconding.
