Less than a week after a woman pilot of a private airline was arrested for procuring pilot licence through forged documents, a co-pilot of Air India was arrested by the Crime Branch of the Delhi Police on Saturday on similar charges. Two more such cases are under scrutiny, the police said.
“Air India co-pilot J. K. Verma, who is in his 40s, was arrested following a complaint by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) that he had produced a forged result card to procure the pilot licence. He is a resident of Pune,” said DCP (CB) Ashok Chand.
Mr. Chand said two more such cases were under investigation.
“We are looking into similar complaints against Meenakshi Sehgal and Swarn Singh of Indigo and MDLR airlines respectively. Meenakshi is a resident of Lawrence Road in Delhi and Swarn belongs to Jaipur. The two are absconding,” he said.
The Crime Branch had arrested Captain Parminder Kaur Gulati (38) on Tuesday on similar charges. The fraud came to light when an enquiry by the DGCA into an incident of “hard landing” of an Indigo airline flight revealed that Captain Gulati had submitted forged documents to obtain the Airlines Transport Pilot Licence. The matter was reported to the police for investigation.
The police found that Ms. Gulati had failed in the air navigation paper and did not take the radio aids and instruments paper, but submitted a forged result card to DGCA on November 11, 2009, and obtained the licence.
PTI reports:
In the wake of the fake pilot scare, licences of 3,000 to 4,000 pilots are being scrutinised by the DGCA, according to Civil Aviation secretary Nasim Zaidi.
