October 24, 2007

The New Killing Fields (IGI Airport Delhi)


Woman techie found dead at IGI Airport.
24 Oct 2007, 0329 hrs IST,TNN

NEW DELHI: A 29-year-old senior technician with Air Deccan was found dead, in mysterious circumstances, on a taxiway at the domestic airport here on Monday night. The police and airport authorities appeared foxed as the family members of the victim, Sansruti Sinha, suggested that it could be murder. The theory was ruled out eventually. The post mortem report said it appeared to be a case of "vehicular accident".

Sansruti, who was to get married soon, was spotted lying in a pool of blood at the airport's E taxiway around 10pm by a SpiceJet pilot. The pilot immediately informed the Air Traffic Control. The aiport manager was alerted. He called up the police at 10.10pm. Sansruti's head was badly crushed and there were severe injuries on other parts of her body.

The police say it seems to be a case of hit-and-run. Strange as it may seem, nobody saw Sansruti being hit by any vehicle. She was found lying on the edge of the taxiway. After talking to the Air Deccan staff, the police came to the conclusion that she was walking towards the hangar to examine an Air Deccan aircraft when she was hit by an unidentified vehicle.

Sansruti's wrist-watch had stopped functioning and showed 9.55pm when the cops examined her body. The police said it was due to the ‘impact' and that it proved there was no delay in informing the cops about the incident as had been suggested earlier.

The body was sent to the Safdarjung Hospital for autopsy and Sansruti's maternal uncle, who lives in Faridabad, was informed. The victim's parents live in Patna. The police have registered a case under IPC sections 279 (rash and negligent driving), 304A (causing death by negligence) and 201 (destruction of evidence). "We are not ruling out anything, but going by the nature of injuries and spot examination, it does seem that she was hit by a vehicle," said joint commissioner of police (operations) Aditya Arya.

he autopsy report also stated that it seemed to be a vehicular accident. It mentioned severe injuries on the skull and multiple fractures in the ribs.

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The ramp,air side as we call it is the most dangerous place at the airport, it is safer to walk on Delhi roads than on air side at IGI Airport.

The fog season is approaching and it is a daily tryst with death which all airlines employees take when they go to air side to to handle flights, only one of the reputed carrier gives its staff vehicles to move around the rest of us have to walk through "ZERO VISIBILITY" to reach the parking bays.This is not the first death on the air side some time back,a security staff of a airline was killed when he was guarding a aircraft , he was run over by a bus and died on the spot and that brought the AAI to enforce the safety jacket rule.

In another case the vehicle belonging to a LCC at early morning rammed in a jeep and was smashed to smithereens the driver was driving over 90 kmh on the taxi way, the same driver was famous for rash driving at the airport and was involved in many accidents and still he was given an ADP( airport driving permit)

There are fixed speed limits on the air side but most of the drivers don't follow these limits, the reason is that most of the drivers and in some cases all the drivers of the airlines are out sourced, they come from local agencies who make it to airport handling business by greasing palms all the way, in some cases the drivers don't even know how to drive a bus as they have never driven a heavy vehicle and some of them use the air side as a place where they learn how to drive.Accident are a common thing at IGI airport as drivers don't keep in speed limits as they are under pressure to move fast from one aircraft to another, they are untrained and caution is thrown to the wind.

Air Deccan started the out sourcing bug and to cut costs they picked staff of the lowest possible denominator so that costs are kept as low as possible, it is simple you don't pay well you don't get quality staff. It is always the man behind the machine who makes the difference not the machine. I don't think the LCC will agree to that for them.


The vehicle which hit the the Technician can not leave the airport , it would be parked at the airport, it is for the police to find that,if they want to.The DP test conducted by the AAI is a joke and any one can get an ADP, in some cases people have been driving with expired ADP and there is no one to check them.

As it is said airport is a place where many things happen in broad day light and in the silence of the dark night and they get buried deep there and then.


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