RIYADH: With gold smuggling to India on the rise in past few months, there have been several instances of airline crew being involved in this illegal activity. But the detention of an Air India flight purser in Saudi Arabia earlier this year is proving to be the most complicated case of its kind for both the airline and the staffer’s family.
The staffer has been staying at a luxury five star hotel of the Oberoi Group in Jeddah for the past six months. This situation arose as he was not arrested and imprisoned! First the airline paid the hotel bill for some months and later the employee’s family started doing that, said an official.
This unprecedented situation arose when an AI cabin crew member went to Jeddah airport on June 3, 2015, to operate AI 964 to Mumbai. Saudi customs found him carrying about 732 grams of gold (worth over Rs 19 lakh at current prices in Delhi). Suspecting smuggling, the employee was detained and his passport confiscated.
“…..till date he has been allowed to stay at Trident Hotel at AI cost. The approval for his stay in Trident was given (by a senior official) on June 8, 2015,” says an October 7 note by AI’s chief vigilance officer (CVO) Shobha Ohatker (VIGHQ/1746) to the airline’s new chairman Ashwani Lohani.
“Till date …. the subject (has not) been placed under suspension. It is also not understood how such a huge amount (of over five months’ stay in Trident Hotel) will ever be recovered from the crew,” the October 7 note, reviewed by TOI, says.
On getting this note, Lohani directed the immediate suspension of the cabin crew member. He ordered that AI will no longer foot the bill for the staffer’s stay in the five star hotel and that whatever has been paid should be recovered to the maximum extent possible from the employee.
A senior AI employee handling the case said that when the employee was first detained, AI officers heading the cabin crew department decided that the airline will pay the hotel bill and later recover the amount from his funds with the airline like PF at the time of settling his account. But when three to four months passed and the hotel stay continued, the new head of the cabin crew department felt that the amount was rising and would be difficult to recover.
“We paid up to Rs 10 lakh to the hotel and then stopped settling the bill. The family has been paying the bill for last month or two. Under Saudi law, a detained staffer cannot change his hotel. First AI and now his family are paying the crew rate airlines have with hotels,” said the officer.
Asked about delay in suspending the employee, the officer said: “We have never suspended an India-based airline employee when he or she is abroad. We have always waited for them to return to India and then take action. This was the first time an India-based AI employee was suspended when he or she was abroad,” said the official.
The Saudi authorities are likely to decide on the staffer’s case by early next month and decide his future.
