Four persons, including a Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) official and a pilot, were arrested on Saturday by the Delhi Police in connection with the fake flying license scam.
Four persons, including a Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) official and a pilot, were arrested on Saturday by the Delhi Police in connection with the fake flying license scam.
The arrested DGCA official, Pradeep Kumar, 48, is an assistant director with the aviation regulator, and was responsible for granting licenses to flying students. Others arrested include a pilot, Pradeep Tyagi, 35, who helped candidates procure fake mark sheets, and his two associates, Pankaj Jain, 23, and Lalit Jain, 34.
Police said that Tyagi had obtained commercial pilots’ license in June 2010 after submitting a forged report card and fudging flying hours. “Tyagi is the main accused. One Deepak Asatkar of Mumbai is a key member who functioned as a conduit for the gang. The pilots paid Rs12 lakh each for the forged mark sheets. Tyagi gave Rs25,000 to Kumar for expediting their files,” said Ashok Chand, DCP, Crime, Delhi Police.
The arrests came following investigations into a complaint filed by the DGCA stating that some pilots had procured licenses using forged mark sheets. The first to be apprehended was Indigo’s Parminder Kaur Gulati on March 8 and Air India’s JK Verma, four days later. “We have smashed this gang. We are looking for three pilots and a flying instructor in Mumbai who are on the run,” Ashok Chand said.
Acting tough against pilots obtaining their commercial licences by submitting fake records and documents, DGCA had recently grounded 14 pilots. The police are now probing if pilots in other parts of the country were also helped.
To get a commercial license as a co-pilot, a candidate must have passed class 12 with Physics and Maths, passed the flying examination of DGCA, and should have clocked up at least 250 flying hours over a period of five years.
To qualify as Captain, candidates need to have 1,500 flying hours as a co-pilot, and they must clear the DGCA’s advanced flying exams. The 14 pilots whose licenses have been revoked had allegedly not flown the mandatory hours and are alleged to have got fake certificates from a Rajasthan-based flight training institute.
DGCA chief EK Bharat Bhushan had recently told a news agency that the Commercial Pilot Licenses (CPLs) of around 10,000 pilots, and 4,000 holders of Airline Transport Pilot Licenses (ATPLs) were under the scanner.
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