Contra Costa County Sheriff’s detectives and Homeland Security agents arrested the co-pilot of a commercial airliner on suspicion of sex crimes against children as his jet was arriving at San Francisco International Airport on the evening of Saturday, July 26.
In a statement released Monday, sheriff’s spokesman Jimmy Lee said that detectives arrested 34-year-old Rustom Bhagwagar of Florida – the plane’s co-pilot – on the charges following an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse of a child under the age of 10.
Published accounts of the arrest included comments from passengers startled by the armed, uniformed push into the plane’s cockpit as the plane arrived at approximately 9:35pm.
On Tuesday, the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office filed a 24-count felony complaint against Bhagwagar, alleging his sexual abuse of a minor between 2018 and 2023 in Contra Costa County.
Bhagwagar is currently in custody at the Martinez Detention Facility on a $15 million bond. He is expected to be arraigned on 24 felony charges including engaging in a sexual act with a child 10 years old or younger, oral copulation with a child, forceable lewd acts upon a child, and aggravated sexual assault of a child.
Also Tuesday, a 45-year-old woman identified by prosecutors only as Jennifer Powell was also charged in a related felony complaint. Powell, who reportedly had been in a relationship with Bhagwagar and who was the appointed guardian of the child named in charges against the pair, has also been booked into the Martinez Detention Facility with charges in both complaints carrying terms of 15 years to life in state prison.
The pair’s alleged abuse of the child reportedly started when she was 6 and ended when she was 11.
Bhagwagar reportedly has ties to San Ramon, though it was not immediately known if the alleged abuse occurred there.
It seems inappropriate to me, that armed law enforcement officers should push into the plane the moment it lands and arrest him right in front of the passengers. I’m sure the airline is not happy about this display. I’m sure passengers thought all the worst, thi ki g it was related to the safety of the flight. They could have gotten him later, as the flight crew stays on the plane until all the passengers have left. Just saying.
You’re naive. When it comes to sexual abuse of a child, who cares what the other passengers or the airline thinks. Get the SOB in custody. There’s a special place in hell for anyone who does this to a child.
Is there also a special place in the White House now, too?
But seriously, he was on an airplane. He wasn’t going anywhere. Wait for everyone to disembark and then arrest him. I fail to understand why all of the passengers had to be inconvenienced for no benefit whatsoever. It was purely for theater.
You’re both clueless as to how LE operates. Hell NO – give him NO chance to get off the plane. They were tracking his ass and that’s the way LE works.
Naive and clueless. You’re funny. “Tracking his ass”? Men with power get away with this all the time. The FBI could have 300 gigabytes of investigative material on someone politically connected and their co-conspirators and refuse to bring charges or release findings. Can you imagine that? It’s not hard.
The guy arrested was a nobody. 2 tiers. He is on the bottom tier.
Good point. Total disregard for the passengers, and it is unnecessarily dismissive of them.
The bad guy is in the bag, so to speak. Let him relax up front while passengers disembark. He’s not considered a threat where he is.
You don’t need 10 law enforcement officers to enter the plane.
There are many reason why the pilot isn’t “in the bag” if you let him sit there and is can still be a threat. The perp and/or other pilot could be FFDOs. He has easy access to a crash axe, or could have easily popped open his window as fled via the escape rope across the tarmac which would halt operations. No reason to Monday AM quarterback the how, particularly when you don’t understand the environment.
Clarence, I completely agree. You either get it or you don’t.
I have flown on airplanes. The pilots routinely remain in the cockpit or at the door during deplaning. There is no reason for an experienced pilot to freak out and become a danger during a routine procedure such as deplaning. They have schedules to keep and probably some log work to do. The smart play is to routinely remove the passengers from any potential danger or interference in the arrest before the arrest. Escape rope? You don’t think Frank and OJ know where that rope meets the tarmac for a parked aircraft?
If this is just your idea of joshing, Captain Oveur, Jennifer isn’t in on the joke.
To the first David comet. I guess you’re alluding to the Jeffrey Epstein files. Everyone wants them release now. I have to ask why weren’t you pressuring to have him release during the previous four years, during the last administration? Why weren’t they release then?
Apparently, “Epstein” is an ongoing big thing in the Maga-sphere, but I believe interest elsewhere generally disappeared after Epstein’s death and Maxwell’s prison sentence ended legal proceedings during the Trump Administration. Bizarre conspiracy theories became a right-wing political cause. If there was a legitimate public campaign to obtain justice for the victims and prosecution of the horrible people involved in the Epstein/Maxwell crimes it was drowned out by the crazy.
Now the dog has caught the bus, and the story spills back out of the Maga-sphere.
As for “David comet”? I did not post a Comet Ping Pong. Perhaps this is a slur that lives in alternate realities. I do not know, but it’s not so easy to drop 2 letters in a 7-letter word by accident.
Ramey warrant may be indicative that the suspect taken into custody was indeed a “flight” risk.
He’s being charged with 24 felonies and being held on a $15 million bond. That’s hardly a “nobody.”
He has no juice. He is a brown man in America with no apparent political or financial connections to make him “somebody” not subject to the millstone of American justice for regular joes.
Further details:
https://sfist.com/2025/07/29/delta-pilot-arrested-at-sfo-was-secretly-recorded-discussing-childs-abuse/
https://sfist.com/2025/07/30/delta-pilot-arraigned-in-contra-costa-county-on/