Sharad gets Bihar to drop FIR against pilots

Sharad gets Bihar to drop FIR against pilots
SWATI CHATURVEDI

NEW DELHI, JULY 21: Union Minister of Civil Aviation Sharad Yadav has protested and forced the Home Department of the Bihar government to withdraw its controversial First Information Report (FIR) against the pilots of the Alliance Air flight CD 7412.

The FIR registered against Captain Sohan Pal and co-pilot A.S. Bagga in Patna was withdrawn last night after Civil Aviation Secretary A.H. Jung spoke to the Bihar Chief Secretary and said that the ``FIR was uncalled for and not valid''. A sheepish Bihar government promplty withdrew the it late last night.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Yadav made his displeasure with the Patna administration clear: ``How can they file a report on dead people. The moment I heard of it I told my officials to take action.'' The FIR was registered on Tuesday by Patna's Gardani bagh police station under five sections of the IPC (rash driving in public, endangering life and personal safety of others) and one section of the Civil Aviation Operation Act on the basis of a statement by Prachi Rajgarhia, a survivor. The police had fixed prima facie responsibility even as a judicial inquiry by a sitting judge of the Patna High Court has already been ordered.

Even the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has objected to the FIR, saying that it was highly unfair to drag in the names of the pilots as the primary cause of the crash.

The Civil Aviation Ministry was forced to launch a damage control exercise to placate the pilots who are up in arms after the ministry declared that ``pilot error'' was the cause of the crash and the FIR was registered. Yadav too had squashed the possibility of ``pilot error'' and defended the pilots even before the court of inquiry in to the crash had begun.

Yadav also said that the government had cleared Rs 325 crore as equity infusion for buying new aircraft. In an exclusive interview to The Indian Express, Yadav said that he was ``willing to borrow from the market to make up the short-fall but, a new fleet would be in place by three months''. ``I have set this deadline and I intend to keep it.'' he asserted.

``Mujhe un pilots (Captain Sohan Lal and A.S. Bagga) pey garv hai. (I am proud of those pilots.),'' he said. Yadav added that he had personally flown with them three times to Patna and ``all this premature talk of pilot error certainly did not emanate from my ministry. It is complete nonsense. How can you blame the pilots? I am a seasoned man, you cannot get me to say what I don't want but, if you ask an official 25 times he will say something. This has been blown out of proportion.''

A delegation of pilots yesterday met the Alliance Air chief A. Goyal and Indian Airlines chief Sunil Arora to complain about the ministry attributing the crash to pilot error. They were told that the ministry had made no such statement and the blame was promptly laid at the media's door.

Yadav said that initially, six turbo-prop aircraft would be purchased for Alliance Air and eventually, the entire fleet would be replaced. ``We will ensure that the technical and financial bids are completed in three months after which the purchases would be made,'' he said.

``Left to me, we would only fly brand new aircraft since we have to spend extra time and effort on maintaining our aging fleet,'' the Minister said when asked what he personally thought of the fact that the entire Alliance Air fleet was nearly 20 years old.

Yadav also said that while he had set no deadline for the probe into the crash to be conducted by a sitting judge of the Patna High Court. Contrary to report, the black box, he said, was undamaged had been handed over to the court of inquiry.