Con posing as PMO official crashlands: Female 'IAS officer' asked DGCA to reinstate banned pilots

She posed as a high-flying bureaucrat and crisscrossed the country to perpetrate con jobs to the tune of crores.
But 51-year-old Sumangali Francina Easther Charles was finally grounded on Tuesday while trying to pass off as an officer on special duty (OSD) to the Prime Minister and seeking a favour for a tainted pilot from the director general of civil aviation (DGCA).
Using the alias of Suman Singh, Sumangali called the office of DGCA E.K. Bharat Bhushan several times before she could finally manage to talk to him on January 20.
'She requested me to give an appointment to a pilot called Amar Singh who, she claimed, needed help,' Bhushan recalled, adding: 'I agreed and the pilot came to my office the next day.'
Amar told Bhushan that he owned an aircraft and needed a licensed pilot. During the course of the conversation, Amar revealed that he himself was a pilot.
'Then Amar said he wanted to be a commander and wanted an airport transport pilot licence. He claimed to already possess a commercial pilot's licence,' Bhushan recalled.
The DGCA then advised him to take an examination for the licence. This is when Amar said that his licence had been barred.
Upon checking the records, Bhushan's office found that his licence had been barred for five years because he has acquired it fraudulently. After this, Amar made a hasty exit from the office. 'I found his behaviour strange and immediately tried to locate the woman who had called me up,' the DGCA said.
Though Bhushan knew OSDs in the PMO and had never heard the name of Suman Singh prior to this, he thought a new person could have taken charge after being transferred or promoted. Bhushan sensed foul play and called up the PMO to verify the identity of Suman.
'My doubts were confirmed when I found that there was no such woman in the PMO,' he added.
During questioning, Sumangali revealed that she got in touch with Amar through her cousin in Mumbai and later made a call to Bhushan.
'She had charged an amount running into lakhs from the pilot for this job,' an officer disclosed.
In 1986, Sumangali came to Delhi and tried her hand at politics by joining a national party (the police did not reveal its name).
However, she failed to make a mark and exited the political arena. She married Delhi-based Charles Ravi Chandran in 1987, but parted ways in 1990. She tied the knot again in 2002, this time with transporter Jagmohan who was also from Delhi.
This marriage, too, was a short-lived affair and she separated from him in 2004. According to the police, she was in a live-in relationship with Jagmohan's relative Sonu and stayed in a rented house at Ramesh Nagar in west Delhi before being apprehended. She had been shuttling between Hyderabad, Chennai and Delhi since 2004.
'Sumangali's victims were generally gullible and desperate people, from whom she used to extract money by promising them jobs or making assurances about settling pending matters through her 'contacts' with senior government officials.
'Her visiting card had the national emblem printed on it and mentioned that she was an IAS officer,' Goel revealed.
26/01/12 Hakeem Irfan/Mail Online India

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Jan 2012