A Sri Lankan passenger on an Air India Mumbai-Delhi-London flight was sent back to Mumbai after the flight landed at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport at 5.30 this morning. The passenger had exchanged his domestic boarding pass, valid for a journey only between Mumbai and Delhi, for an international boarding pass. The passenger who was actually destined to travel to London had disembarked at Delhi airport, leaving behind the Sri Lankan with just a boarding pass and no passport or visa. He was detected aboard the flight by Air India personnel.

Every time Air India officials detect a passenger travelling with incomplete documents on their flights, they save themselves a cool 50,000 US dollars. The tightened vigil on all Air India flights is because, for every passenger who boards their flight with incomplete documents and is subsequently detected at an international airport, the airlines has to foot the bill.

After years of ``paying up'', Air India has decided totighten its belt and make sure that on their flights every passenger has his/her documents in place. As a result, not only are the passenger's documents scrutinised by immigration and customs officials, Air India staff do their bit of checking too.

Working parallel to immigration officials, Investigation and Fraud Prevention (IFP) unit of Air India checks passengers at the entry point at the airport, the transit lounge and even inside the aircraft to ensure that nobody gets a ticket to ride on incomplete or forged documents. Result: Till June this year, 51 cases of passengers travelling on incomplete documents have been detected and last year, they saved the Exchequer Rs 2 crore.

``We had no choice,'' explains a Air India security official. ``After the Punjab and Sri Lanka problems, the number of people travelling abroad increased. Not only were most of them going out illegally, they were using Air India to fly. In the mid-80s, we figured high on the US list for dropping passengers with incomplete papersat their doorstep.''

Around a decade ago, the UK, US, Germany, Italy and France decided that ``illegal entry'' into their country had to be stopped. So the US came up with the fine-the-airline policy, which was later adopted by other countries.

According to the policy, for every passenger detected at these international airports, the airline on which the person travelled would be required to pay a fine. This fine includes immigration charges, boarding and food charges of the passenger and all legal expenses.

This vigil led to the detection of three cases early this morning. In all cases, the passengers had got past the immigration counters with incomplete documents. ``Immigration does not care because they don't have to pay the fine,'' says an Air India security officer. ``We can't take chances as the cost is too high.''

Immigration Charges

UK - 2,000 pounds

USA - 3,000 US dollars

Canada - 3,000 US dollars

Germany - 3,000 marks

France - 5,000 francs

Italy -20,000 lira

AI SUCCESS RATE

1996 - 12 cases

1997 - 19 cases

1998 - 48 cases

Till June 1999 - 51 cases