NEW DELHI: Airline officials said that Indian Civil aviation authorities are desperate to improve safety measures in the country and boost its aviation safety ratings but law enforcement agencies like air customs are undermining these efforts by blatantly flouting rules.
Air customs officials, some of whom face charges of colluding with smugglers, refuse to allow airline officials to frisk them before they enter an aircraft to carry out inspections, despite Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) rules that make it compulsory for everyone to submit to checks before entering an aircraft.
The stand of the customs officials led to a standoff between them and airline security personnel at airports across the country. On one occasion six months ago, airline security personnel refused to allow customs officials to board an aircraft for inspection after they objected to checks. The situation apparently got out of hand a few months earlier when customs officials started to regularly board aircraft that arrived from international destinations following the seizure of gold from under the seat of a jet at the Chennai airport.
Tempers flared at the Bengaluru airport on March 25 after three customs officials argued with airline security personnel and demanded that they board a Bengaluru-Hyderabad flight without submitting to checks. Air traffic had called back the departing flight from the runway to apprehend two passengers suspected to be accomplices of a gold smuggler. Passengers, irked by the delay, opposed the customs officials from entering the aircraft without checks. But the officials boarded the aircraft and detained the two passengers all the same.
Customs officials even had airline security personnel detained overnight on the charge of “obstructing a government official from doing his duty”.
