Court of Inquiry - Two Passengers on Crashed Flight Used Fake Passports
Daijiworld Media Network—Mangalore (CN)
Mangalore, Aug 19: During the proceedings at the Court of Inquiry (CoI) into the crash of Air India Express IX812, Venkatesh Prasanna, Inspector of District Crime and Intelligence Bureau (DCIB), deposed that they had found two passengers to have travelled using fake passports.
On the final day of the public hearing in the city as part of the CoI, Prasanna deposed that the police investigation had revealed that Mohammad Ashfaq from Kerala and Abdul Samad, resident of Kannur in Kerala, had used fake passports.
He said that passport F3646893, used by Mohammad Ashfaq, was issued to Gonsalves Marian Ignetius in Mumbai and Abdul Samad’s passport F0606599 was issued to Shahnavas Velleritangal of Kozhikode.
Prasanna added that there are 23 passports yet to be verified and they had completed verification of 135 passports.
He also revealed that they had found out that passenger Arun Kumar Shetty had used his mobile phone in the aircraft to call his brother in Kundapur before landing. “As per the relatives of the passenger, he had called half an hour before he was due to reach Mangalore”, said Prasanna. He added that the investigation related to this particular issue was going on as there is need to collect phone call details.
Head of the CoI, Air Marshal (retired) B N Gokhale later told reporters that the fake passport issue comes under crime and the Court is investigating the crash. He said that technical problems arising from use of mobile phones cannot be ruled out and the CoI would look into the police investigation reports.
In response to a query by participants about allowing the public to help to retrieve the bodies from plane, assistant commissioner of police Girish S said that most of the volunteers were good. “When someone helps on humanitarian grounds, it cannot be prevented,” he said.
Valentine D’Souza, circle inspector, said that the viscera and toxic analysis reports of pilot and co-pilot have been delayed. Gokhale asked him to get the reports as soon as possible and extended the time to submit the report by one month, that is, to September 30.
He also said that transcripts of the Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) and CVR will be presented before the CoI during the public hearing at Delhi, which will be on September 9.
“During the public hearing in Delhi the details of DFDR and transcripts of CVR will be presented. We will use an alternative way if the viscera reports of pilot and the co-pilot get delayed beyond September 30, the deadline to submit the CoI report to the civil aviation ministry”, he added.
“CoI will recommend its findings to the ministry concerned and the government,” concluded Gokhale.