Four senior ATC officers, all union leaders facing prosecution for being at the helm of an 18-day air traffic controllers’ strike that crippled airports across the country in February 1999, are now getting help from unlikely quarters: the state home department, which wants the prosecution to withdraw the case against them.

The state Home Department has already sent two letters, one dated November 22, 2006 and another June 2, 2007, asking the public prosecutor’s office to file a withdrawal application. The Government move comes after, and in spite of, the Supreme Court dismissing the ATC officers’ plea for a discharge in the case way back in 2002.

Additional Special Public Prosecutor Rohini Salian has replied to the home department saying she is “of the opinion there is no case made out on merits for withdrawal” as the apex court has dismissed their discharge petition showing “there is prima facie evidence against the accused.”

Prasanta Bahuguna, Manoj Sinha, Parni Shrinivas, Sudhangshu Gupta and Birendrakumar Shekhar (now deceased) were attached to Mumbai ATC and belonged to the Air Traffic Controllers Guild during the strike in 1999. After the then Chairman of the Airport Authorities of India, D V Gupta, sanctioned their prosecution, the four were slapped with a case under the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against Safety of Civil Administration (SUASCA) Act. A case was registered against the four by then AAI Regional Director V K Kalra for using “airport apparatus, disrupting air-traffic and endangering human life under the SUASCA Act”. The ATC officers were dismissed from service but subsequently reinstated on humanitarian grounds.

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