29 March,2011 08:09 AM IST | | Abhishek Anand and Atul Krishan
Police issue lookout notice suspecting they might flee the country. CBI likely to take over probe
The Crime Branch of Delhi Police on Monday issued a lookout notice against three pilots and a flying instructor for their involvement in the fake pilot licence scam.
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"We have issued a lookout notice against flying instructor Deepak Atslar, pilots Bhupinder Singh, Syed Habib Ali and Swarn Singh Talwar. Habib and Swarn were supposed to be working with Indigo airlines," said DCP (crime) Ashok Chand.u00a0u00a0Sources said that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is likely to take over the probe.
Meanwhile, the police said all these pilots who are under investigation have quit their jobs and are now absconding. Despite several notices, none of them have reported to the police and the cops suspect they might even try to flee the country.
"During the investigation, we found that Bhupinder's family lives abroad. So there are chances that to avoid the arrest, he might try to leave the country. The other two pilots have also not been traced since we started arresting these 'fake' pilots," said a police officer.
He added that police's suspicion was further strengthened when one of the suspected pilots, Meenakshi Sehgal of Indigo Airlines, didn't answer subsequent notices served on her by the police.
"The accused Meenakshi answered our first notice and came to our office on March 16, promising that she will cooperate further in the investigation. But after that she never came to our office. So we decided to take further action, but in the meantime she surrendered in a local court. We suspected that she was trying to flee the country but being a resident of Delhi she might have realised that she would be caught, so she surrendered," he said. He further added that if cases of pilots having fled the country come to light, the police will take help of Interpol to nab them.
Crash-landing
On March 21, two pilots of budget carrier SpiceJet were arrested for allegedly obtaining commercial pilot's licence on the basis of forged certificates. The pilots were identified as Anoop Choudhary and Amit Moondra, who were posted with the carrier at New Delhi. Four more persons, including a senior official of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, have been arrested by the Delhi Police for allegedly being part of the nationwide fake pilot licence scam. This takes the number of those arrested in the scam to six. The arrested person are Pradeep Kumar, 48, an assistant director with the DGCA, Pradeep Tyagi, 35, a pilot who helped people get fake marksheets and touts Pankaj Jain, 23, and Lalit Jain, 34.
