New Delhi:
Every day, fresh cases of fake pilots being found and arrested seem to be coming up. The arrests of the latest fake pilots, Abhishek Kaushik and Hiren Nagar, have led the Delhi police to a new angle of the racket in Gujarat.
Kaushik and Nagar, both in their mid-twenties, met during training at a flying school in Indore. Nagar later led Kaushik to tout Eknath Patil in Ahmedabad, who had forged his pilot exams mark sheets, based on which he got a license.
"If one has to get a Commercial Pilot's Licence (CPL), one has to pass five papers. Kaushik could only pass two papers. Nagar told him he could get the licence if he paid Rs 7.5 lakh," said Ashok Chand, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Delhi Crime Branch.
To get his papers forged, Kaushik had to pay Nagar Rs 1.5 lakh, and Patil 6 lakh.
Now under arrest, Patil had started out as a peon in a flying club in Indore. He went on to become a flight supervisor in schools at Indore and Ahmedabad.
Police suspect Patil started forging pilots' documents after leaving his job in 2007.
The police are looking out for one more pilot who has forged papers according to the complaint forwarded to them by the DGCA. So far no other official from the DGCA is under suspicion, but the police are not leaving them out of the probe.
"These verifications should have been done by them, which did not happen. Clearly there is a lapse, but the complaints are also coming from them," said Ashok Chand.
In the wake of the fake pilot scare, licences of 3,000 to 4,000 pilots are being scrutinised by the DGCA.