Indira Gandhi International Airport employees commit Section 66 offence..Action called for from Ministry of Aviation

I hereby report that On 13th December 2016, a Section 66-ITA 2000/8 offence has been committed by some of the employees of the Air India counter at the Indira Gandhi International Airport and seek action both by the Police in charge of the IGI terminal and the Ministry of Civil Aviation. This is an offence which carries three year’s imprisonment and is cognizable.

The incident involves unauthorized cancellation of a checked in passenger and allocation of the seat to another passenger for some consideration to be established in the further investigation.

The proof of the offence is available in the computers at the Air India check in system and the CCTV cameras in the airport between around 6.30 PM and 11.30 PM on 13th December 2016. The CCTV footage and the Computer records pertaining to the incident is an evidence of a cognizable offence and need to be seized as evidence and should not be destroyed. If deleted, it would amount to another offence under Section 65 of ITA 2000/8. Since I am marking copies of this open complaint to the authorities in the Civil Aviation Ministry as well as the IGI terminal, all of the authorities will be considered as notified and any action not to hand over the evidence under any pretext will be considered as further compounding the offence.

The intended victim of the offence was the undersigned (Vijayashankar Nagaraja Rao) registered passenger by AI 504 scheduled to leave at 20.30 hours but delayed first upto 22.30 and subsequently upto 23.30.

The suspected beneficiary was another registered passenger by name Ms Priyanka Gupta.

The offence was authorized by the “Station Manager” or such official and was endorsed by the Airport Manager.

The victim fought for his rights and ultimately ensured that the intention of the perpetrators of the offence was thwarted. However the incident remains to be a punishable offence and requires further administrative investigation as to the possibility of corruption of some of the officials.

Though the grievance was redressed,

The charge of Section 66 ..Unauthorized damage to information residing inside a computer resource on the employee at the counter who under his log in deleted the passenger Vijayashankar Nagaraja Rao whose cheque in sequence was 8 and allocated the seat 6D in AI 504 of 13th December 2016 stands.

The offence extended to further modify the computer record by insertion of another passenger Ms Priyanka Gupta who was granted check in under the sequence 174 and allocated the same seat 6D.

The conspirators include the “SM” who authorized the deletion and addition.

The airport Manager who called at the final entry counter around 11.15 endorsed the offence and first declared that Mr Vijayashankar Nagaraja Rao has to be off loaded, then threatened that both Mr Vijayashankar and the beneficiary Ms Priyanka Gupta would be off-loaded, until he finally relented to the demand of the undersigned and let him travel. He is also therefore part of the conspiracy and the main accused because of his authority as the overall in charge of the operation.

The airport manager whose photograph is found here in even tried to use physical force to prevent the undersigned from boarding.

The main witness to be examined is the Duty Manager Mr Akbar whose photograph is also enclosed.

All other details should be available in the CCTV footages.

I demand that an extract of all relevant CCTV footage at the time of checking in of Ms Priyanka Gupta as well as Mr Vijayashankar passing through the security check and finally the encounter at the boarding gate for about 45 minutes prior to departure should be provided to the undersigned along with the log records showing the deletion and additions to the check in list mentioned above.

I request that the above information is taken note off by all relevant authorities and a proper investigation is conducted on how the employees can arbitrarily delete any of the passengers who have checked in earlier to accommodate their favourites. I understand that the flight was overbooked and several passengers were off loaded to accommodate some late comers. Investigation is necessary to find out who all were given priority check ins by offloading other legitimate passengers and who authorized such action and on what consideration.

I request honourable minister Mr Ashok Gajapati Raju to immediately order an enquiry and take suitable action against all the erring employees including the Airport Manager.

I am looking forward to receive details of action taken in this regard to follow up later with an RTI application if necessary. The photographs of relevant persons for enquiry purpose.