Fake flying licence scam: Four arrested in Delhi

New Delhi, Mar 26 (PTI) A senior official of airline
regulator DGCA and three others, including a pilot, were
arrested with Delhi Police Saturday claiming that it has
smashed a racket involved in forging marksheets to help pilots
procure licences.
With these arrests, the Crime Branch of the city
police have arrested six persons, including three pilots, in
connection with the case of pilots procuring licences using
forged marksheets.
Three pilots and a conduit of the gang are still on
the run while another pilot has joined investigations.
"We have smashed this gang. We are looking for three
pilots and a conduit of the racket who is a flying instructor
in Mumbai who are on the run," Ashok Chand, Deputy
Commissioner of Police (Crime), told reporters here.
Pradeep Kumar (48), presently an Assistant Director
with the DGCA, Pradeep Tyagi (35), a pilot who helped others
to procure fake marksheets, and his two associates Pankaj Jain
(23) and Lalit Jain (34) were arrested between March 23 and
yesterday from Delhi and Chennai.
Pankaj and Pradeep Jain were arrested from the capital
Friday while Lalit was arrested from Chennai on March 24.
Tyagi was arrested from Rohini here on March 23.
Tyagi had himself obtained commercial pilot licence
in June 2010 through forged result card and fudged flying
hour.
"Tyagi is the main person of the racket. One Deepak
Asatkar of Mumbai is a conduit of the gang. The pilots have
paid Rs 12 lakh each for the forged marksheets to get
licences. Rs 25,000 was given to Kumar by Tyagi for expediting
their files," Chand said.
The arrests came following investigations into a
complaint filed by Directorate General of Civil Aviation
claiming that some pilots had procured licences using forged
marksheets. The first to be apprehended was suspended Indigo
pilot Parminder Kaur Gulati on March 8 and J K Verma of Air
India four days later.
Meenakshi Sehgal of Indigo, another suspect, has
obtained a court order preventing her arrest though she has
been asked to join investigations.
However, pilots Swaran Singh Talwar of MDLR and Syed
Habib Ali and Bhupinder Singh, who have licences but have not
joined any airline, are still on the run.
The pilots had allegedly procured Airlines Transport
Pilot Licence (ATPL) using fake documents. "One has to clear
three subjects -- Aviation Meteorology, Radio Aids &
Instruments and Air Navigation -- to get ATPL, mandatory for
becoming a Commander of a plane. However, these pilots failed
in one or the other papers," he said.
Elaborating on the investigations, Chand said Verma
had approached Asatkar, who is a former flying instructor at a
Mumbai-based flying school and resides in Andheri, and linked
him with Tyagi.
"Tyagi with the help of Lalit and Pankaj provided
Verma the forged marksheets. Tyagi kept Rs six lakh with him
while give Rs one lakh each to Lalit and Pankaj. The DGCA
official was given Rs 25,000," Chand said. Gulati knew Tyagi
from 1994 and got in touch with him for the forged marksheets.
"Tyagi had since 2008 developed contacts in DGCA for
smooth processing of the papers for grant of licences to the
pilots who had engaged him for this purpose," he said.
Tyagi joined the Delhi Flying Club in 1994 and
obtained his student licence in 2000 from Karnal. Thereafter
he started a cardboard manufacturing unit in Sadiq Nagar in
Uttar Pradesh.
The DGCA official completed his diploma in Electronic
Engineering from Meerut. and joined DGCA in 1992 as a Junior
Technical Assistant. At present he is working as Assistant
Director in the Directorate of Aircraft Engineering.
Lalit did flying from Pinjore and Baroda and later
joined his father in his family business of Hardware and
Sanitary. He is married and has two sons.
Pankaj initially worked as receptionist in a hospital
in Noida and also worked with a bank as a marketing executive.
He is also an insurance advisor with a LIC.