Thaindian News

Jaipur, May 26 (IANS) Rajasthan Police Thursday named Pawan Dilwar, son of a senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former minister Madan Dilwar, as an accused in the fake pilot scam, an official said.

The anti-corruption bureau (ACB) of police lodged a first information report (FIR) against four pilots, claiming they fraudulently got commercial pilot’s licences (CPL) by faking flying hours’ certificates from the Rajasthan State Flying School.

Pawan Dilwar, whose father was the social welfare minister in the previous BJP government, also figures in the list of the accused.

“Pawan faked the flying hours and got the CPL. His name has been included in the FIR after examination of the flying school’s records. He had faked cross-country flights between Jaipur and Ajmer and Jaipur and Hisar,” said an ACB official.

He added that Pawan had faked around 43 hours of flying training to get the CPL from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.

The other three men named in the FIR are Ankur Garg, Sidharth Lobach and Rohan Saxena. The ACB official said they will be arrested after further investigations.

In March, the ACB arrested pilots of a private airline - Anoop Choudhary and Amit Mundara.

For getting a CPL, a pilot needs 200 hours of flying training. The accused pilots faked training hours in connivance with chief flying instructors of the Rajasthan Flying School in Jaipur and the Hisar Flying School in Haryana, the official added.

The only aircraft available with the Rajasthan State Flying School was under maintenance and was not being used for training. Despite that, its chief flying instructor, Mohindra Kumar, allegedly faked the flight training log books and issued certificates to the aspirants.

The Rajasthan ACB claimed nearly four months ago that there were nationwide rackets that involved preparing fake documents for securing CPLs.

The scam surfaced last year when Nidhi Vashishta of Bahadurgarh in Haryana complained to Rajasthan Police.

She had enrolled for the commercial flying pilot course at the Rajasthan State Flying School in July 2006. She was trained only for 22 hours but the instructor associated with the flying school recorded 169 hours in their record and sent it to aviation regulator.

The official said the flight training was to take place in the air space between Jaipur and Hisar.

The two chief flying instructors allegedly took over Rs.5 lakh as bribe from each of the individuals for issuing fake flying hour certificates, the official added.

Th ACB has so far arrested two flying instructors, an assistant flying instructor, five pilots and an assistant manager of the Jaipur International Airport’s air traffic control.