The probe began in October last year when the Pune police moved in against the five-year-old Carver Aviation Academy in Baramati, the constituency of Agriculture Minister and NCP chief Sharad Pawar. Police action came after Carver CEO Marc Carvalho — a former Air India purser — filed a complaint against his Chief Flying Instructor Captain A Taxali of financial irregularities. Taxali and three other senior employees were arrested and released on bail.

But that complaint was just scratching the surface.

For, a high-level DGCA inquiry has indicted the CEO holding him “responsible” for a sweeping range of irregularities including issuing fraudulent flight certificates to 25 pilots, forging signatures and approvals.

These pilots, who completed their training in flight schools in USA and Canada, enrolled at Carver for their “conversion tests,” needed for getting the DGCA licence to fly in India. Each of them paid Rs 3.2 lakh as fees. Now they, too, have been named as “accused” and have got show-cause notices by the DGCA which has called for their licences to be cancelled.

The DGCA’s 23-page investigation report, obtained by The Sunday Express, and submitted to the Ministry on January 4 was categorical in its indictment: It called for prompt cancellation of all approvals to the academy as well as of all licences issued to pilots, even the one issued to the Chief Flying Instructor.

It also slammed Carver CEO Carvalho: “...He is responsible for all the episodes and cannot absolve himself from the responsibilities of an accountable manager...he failed to control the activities of his academy.”

Despite this, on January 11, the Ministry over-ruled the DGCA: “The investigation report has been examined along with the representation made by Carver Aviation Academy and it has been decided that suspension of flying training approval of the Academy may be revoked.” This directive, signed by Under Secretary S R Parasher ends with, “This has the approval of Honourable Minister of Civil Aviation (Praful Patel).”

Ironically, in the same note, the Ministry acknowledges the irregularities at Carver Academy and asks the DGCA to “ensure a strict monitoring system to avoid recurrence of such malpractices, not only in Carver Aviation Academy, but in all other flying training institutes.”

A letter was also sent to the academy instructing it to “ensure that monitoring systems proposed are strictly adhered to so that there are no complaints of malpractices in future.”

When asked about the Ministry’s move to over-rule the DGCA’s findings, DGCA chief Kanu Gohain told The Sunday Express: “The DGCA investigations were done by an independent committee but when the Ministry issues us instructions to revoke the suspension of authorisation, we have to listen to their instructions.”

He added that the DGCA was taking “very serious” note of the lapses and was in the process of putting warning stickers on the licences of the pilots, many of whom are said to have already landed jobs as full-fledged pilots. The DGCA has enough reason to.

Consider some of the key findings of its inquiry:

• Discrepancies in flying records maintained by the academy and the logs of the pilots showing that many more flying hours were being attributed to pilots than were being logged.

• Records of pilots in the authorisation book and journey log book don’t match Carver’s official records.

• As early as June last year, the academy had had its authorization suspended since they were doing night-flying training without authorization from the DGCA.

• Senior Indian Air Force officials located in the Pune station were questioned by the DGCA and the police since academy officials had allegedly forged stamps and signatures of Air Traffic Controllers of the IAF station on flight-test certificates. Air Officer Command of the Pune station told DGCA that no Carver flight ever landed at Pune Air Force.

• CEO Marc Carvalho was aware of the irregularities in the academy going on since January 2007 as he himself stated but he never reported the same to the DGCA.

• No official appointment letters were issued to the Chief Flying Instructor and other instructors indicating “intention of tax evasion.”

• All the 25 Flight Test Reports have been carried out by Captain A Taxali, CFI without actually carrying out the flight test. Student-pilots also became a party to the forgery by appending counter signature on the flight-test reports.

When The Sunday Express visited the academy yesterday, it appeared to be business as usual with a fresh batch of aspirant pilots taking off and landing their Cessnas.

While the CEO could not be contacted, General Manager Pramesh Parikh admitted the academy was forced to shut down for two months after police arrested several of their key officials and that flying commenced only after the Ministry’s green light in mid-January.

Said Parikh: “Following the detection of the forgery, we have shifted all our enrolment and registration operations to Mumbai. As far as the police cases and inquiry go, let me tell you not a single one of the 25 pilots to whom fictitious certificates were issued ever visited this place. They were never registered with us.”

The existing Carver staff point fingers at Taxali. However, when contacted, Taxali claimed that he was being “made a scapegoat by the top management.” He admitted that it was “some financial dispute between me and the CEO” that started the whole controversy. “It is thanks to the police and the DGCA that the fraudulent nature of the pilot-training operations have been detected,” he said.

Even as the blame game goes on in Baramati, the police in Pune are finalizing their investigations and say they will shortly chargesheet the accused. Nangre Patil, Superintendent of Police, overseeing the case, said several statements of the pilots are yet to be recorded. “Besides the management, the 25 pilots also will be culpable for the fraud if we are able to establish mens rea. We are consulting senior IAF officials and legal experts for the case since what has happened has grave security and criminal implications.”

(Tomorrow: The plight of the student pilots)