Slightly off-topic, but one of my mining friends worked in Africa a loooooooooooong time ago, and tells the tale of waiting on board an aircraft prior to takeoff. Finally the pilot appears, and says that the co-pilot is not turning up and he's going to fly the leg alone, anyone who's not happy can get off and wait. No-one gets off, and the flight is uneventful until cruise, when the pilot ties the cockpit door back with elastic, and goes to the loo. A little bit of turbulence, and the cockpit door swings shut - and locked. Out comes the fire axe, and the pilot hacks his way back into the cockpit, watched by the slightly nervous passengers.
Back on-topic - I have no difficulty believing that the AIE FO was so incompetent that he couldn't regain control. There are other threads here about pilots faking their documentation, and management overturning failed checks, and they all ring true. When working in Tokyo a while ago I became friends with a British consular official who had previously worked in India. He said that he saw a huge volume of faked documents from Indians seeking visas. To prove the problem to his sceptical superiors he obtained a fully certified death certificate - for himself, of course. So I'll never fly on an Indian airline. Just one crash can ruin your whole day.