The honourable Minister of Civil Aviation Mr Ashok Gajapati Raju has earlier taken many customer friendly measures to improve the aviation service and now here is another occassion for the ministry under his leadership to show that it cares for the customer.
All of know that Air India as a National Indian Carrier has quietly given away its leadership in the industry to private competitors and today is struggling to remain relevant. While there are some die hard people like us who still want to support the air line, time and again it has the habit of coming up with some misdeed or the other.
Unfortunately, this time I was personally the victim of what I deem as a “Corrupt” practice as explained in my previous article . Following the event, I have now brought it to the notice of the Ministry both Mr Ashok Gajapathi Raju and also Mr Jayant Sinha and will await their response.
I would like all the employees of Air India to understand that “Unauthorized Modification” of data inside the computer is a cognizable offence under Sec 66 of the Act. I am sure that there will be an attempt now to erase some of these data which will also be an offence under Section 65 of the Act. Whether it is the operator at the counter who is responsible for the offence or his boss who has authorized the changes, has to be decided by the evidence. Obviously there will be vicarious liability on the executives since they have to set the policies of how such alterations can be made. In the current instance, I have pointed out that the Air Port manager has tried to justify the offence until the last moment and but for my determined counter argument would have abetted the completion of the crime.
I also would like to point out passengers such as Ms Priyanka Gupta that being the beneficiary of such a fraud makes them also part of the conspiracy and answerable to the law however innocent they may otherwise be.
I am fully aware that some times registered passengers do turn up late for check in due so some problems such as traffic issues etc and at those times we have heard Air India staff turning down their check in for even a few minutes delay. In the instant case however, they dared to randomly chose some passenger who has already checked in and waiting some where in the Air port for the delayed flight to start and deleted his check in.
I donot understand how they planned to handle the situation at the boarding gate and whether the affected person could be bullied into accepting a situation where he is off loaded for no fault of his. Probably they made the mistake of chosing a person who was already inside the airport and would definitely arrive at the boarding gate instead of some body who had not yet reached the airport when the preferred customer was sought to be accommodated.
I have requested the ministry to investigate in the matter.
Let’s us wait and see how they respond. If possible we can watch over an RTI trail how they handle this complaint in the next few days. Since I have made this a Cyber Crime Complaint, I hope police in Delhi will also take note and suo moto start an investigation of their own.
I I have forwarded a request to APAI ( association of air passengers) to take up this matter for further follow up.
Anybody else who have had similar experience in the past should also take up their complaints with the minsitry so that they know the seriousness of the situation.
Naavi
