How this pilot paid a bribe of Rs 50K for a licence!

One more pilot was arrested for allegedly using forged marksheets to procure commercial flying licences, taking the total number of people arrested in such cases to 19.

The names of Jigesh G Bhai Patel and Saurabh P Lokhande have also been forwarded to Delhi Police's Crime Branch by airline regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), which claimed that the duo submitted forged marksheets for obtaining the Commercial Pilot Licence (CPL).

Rohit Kapoor (22) was apprehended from R K Puram in south Delhi on Wednesday, Ashok Chand, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime), said.

Patel and Lokhande as well as a middleman are yet to be arrested, he said. "This is the fourth module which we have cracked in this connection," Chand said, adding a total of five pilots and two middlemen are on the run.

With this, Delhi Police have arrested 11 pilots, three DGCA officials, a middleman and two forgers. Jaipur Police had also earlier arrested two fake pilots. Police have so far cracked four modules involved in supplying forged marksheets to help people procure pilot licences.

Kapoor had joined a three-year diploma course in aeronautical mechanical engineering from an aviation academy in Hyderabad but left the course after completing two years as he did not find it useful.

In March 2008, he went to Phillipines for a flying course and joined an institute. In December 2008, he came to India and appeared for pilot examination but could not pass any paper.

He once again appeared in all the three exams in April 2009 but could pass only one paper of Air Regulation.

Then he went back to Phillipines and completed his flying hours and got his CPL in January 2010. In April 2010 session, he appeared in Air Navigation Composite paper for conversion of CPL (Phillipines) into CPL (India) but could not clear the same.

"Thereafter, he once again appeared for Air Navigation Composite paper in June 2010 special session but could not clear the paper. In July 2010, he met a contact in Delhi who assured him that on payment of Rs 50,000 he would help him in getting him the result card and would also get his file processed in DGCA for grant of CPL licence," Chand said.

Kapoor allegedly paid Rs 50,000 to the contact who then submitted the documents for obtaining of CPL with the DGCA. However, there was suspicion over his documents and the file was kept pending by the DGCA.

In the first module relating to the grant of Airline Transportation Pilot Licence (ATPL), kingpin Pradeep Tyagi, Parminder Kaur Gulati, Jitender Krishan Varma, Meenakshi Singhal, Swarn Singh Talwar, all pilots, forgers Lalit Jain and Pankaj Jain and DGCA official Pradeep Kumar, were arrested.

Two pilots - Syed Ali Habeeb and Bhupinder Singh - and middleman Deepak Asatkar are absconding. The second module relates to the grant of CPL licence.

The kingpin of this module Eknath Patil, pilots Abhishek Kaushik and Hiren Nagar and two DGCA officials Mohd Kasim Ansari and Mahan Jyoti Bhattacharya, were arrested while a pilot Gaurav Jain is still on the run.

The third module, which was smashed on May 2, also dealt with CPL licences. "The kingpin of the module has been identified but is yet to be arrested. The first to be arrested in this module was pilot Saif Misbah on April 14 followed by two other pilots - Prakash, who was arrested on April 28, and Sannigrahi, held on May 2," he added.