News Tonight

Yet another airline pilot has been arrested for forging the marksheet documents required to get a pilot’s license. According to a Delhi police official, Avinav Kaushik, who flew planes for the private airline Indigo, was arrested because he illegally procured a pilot’s license from the DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation).

In addition to Mr. Kaushik, police have made four other recent arrests for men doing the same type of thing. Parwinder Kaur Gulati of Indigo and J K Verma of Air India were arrested, and two men from Jaipur who worked for Spice Jet, Anoop Choudhury and Amit Moondra, also committed a similar crime.

In the year 2000, Arjun Giare was exposed by the US examiner for faking documents that eventually allowed him to become a pilot for Air India. After he was discovered, the United States Federal Aviation canceled his license. However, Mr. Giare went on to forge even more documents and somehow cheated his way into being issued another pilots license through India. However, discrepancies in his reported date of birth and using fake numbers on his documents led him to being discovered by officials once more.

During this fake pilot scare where so many pilots are being discovered as frauds, the DGCA is scrupulously examining the licenses of 3,000 to 4,000 pilots.