Airline exec sacked for fraud, booked in Gurugram

Police said that by the time her misdeeds surfaced and her job was terminated on June 7 last year, she had tampered with the pay package documents of 90 candidates

A senior executive of a private airline was sacked for forging documents to hire employees at very high pay packages in return for kickbacks, police said on Friday, adding that she was booked on Thursday.

The suspect is a resident of Gurugram Sector 19 and was hired as an associate for the airline’s talent acquisition department which has its office in Sector 30 on December 14, 2022. (Representational image)

Police said that by the time her misdeeds surfaced and her job was terminated on June 7 last year, she had tampered with the pay package documents of 90 candidates of who several were already hired by the firm at various positions, causing her employer a loss of ₹2.41 crore.

The figure may go higher as the investigation has just begun, police said.

The suspect is a resident of Gurugram Sector 19 and was hired as an associate for the airline’s talent acquisition department which has its office in Sector 30 on December 14, 2022.

A senior police officer, quoting the allegations in the complaint, said that the executive came under the scanner of senior authorities when she was asked to fly to Kochi to hold a recruitment drive from May 26 to May 28 last year.

“However, surprisingly she changed her travel dates for the drive from May 25 to May 30 and sent an altered email with the changed dates to the firm’s personnel department asking him to book round-trip tickets for Kochi from May 25 to May 30,” he said quoting the FIR.

“Incidentally, the personnel department official contacted the suspect’s reporting manager for approval when this forgery came to light and the deputy general manager of the personnel department was alerted which led to her sacking on June 7 last year after a preliminary inquiry over changing travel dates in the email for which she failed to give any satisfactory reply,” he added.

Investigators said that an internal inquiry was carried out which revealed that she had been forging documents and emails to show inflated pay packages of the candidates being finalised for recruitment on the basis of which they were given new pay which was several times higher than the original one.

According to the FIR, the suspect had shown a candidate’s package as ₹9.7 lakh before a senior official to get a package of ₹15.85 lakh sanctioned for hiring while her actual annual salary was ₹6.45 lakh which was a virtually 145.7% hike. Another candidate had an actual package of ₹13.22 lakh but she was given an annual package of ₹26 lakh as the suspect had shown her pay to be ₹20 lakh per annum. Police said the suspicion is that the sacked official had either received or asked for kickbacks against the higher packages which was being investigated.

The airline general manager (legal), Alhad N Kulkarni, submitted a written complaint to the Gurugram police on July 5 last year based on which the economic offences unit carried out an inquiry and found the allegations prima facie true after which an FIR was registered against the suspect under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 408 (criminal breach of trust), 465 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using forged documents or electronic records as genuine) of the Indian Penal Code at Sector 40 police station on Thursday.

Inspector Manoj Verma, station house officer of the Sector-40 police station, said that the EOW was carrying out an investigation in the case. “They will take necessary legal action against the woman soon,” he added.