Last week, a jet operated by a private Pakistani airline, Shaheen Air, skidded off the runway while landing in the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore. About 120 passengers were on board as the plane lumbered into a grassy field, blowing a tire but stopping about 1,000 feet from certain disaster. Ten passengers were slightly injured in the crash, which raised further questions about the safety of Pakistan’s aging fleet of private and state-owned domestic airlines.

Over the weekend, a government investigation into the accident concluded the pilot, Asmat Mehmood, was “drunk” at the time of the crash. According to Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority, Mehmood had a blood alcohol level of .08. Since 1977, alcohol has been banned in Pakistan. CAA regulations state that “no alcohol level is acceptable in the blood” of pilots, cockpit or cabin crews or passengers in Pakistan. In the United States, the CAA noted in a statement, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations prohibits pilots from flying if their blood alcohol level exceeds .04.

Mehmood’s family and some of his colleagues deny he had been drinking. Instead, they describe him as hero who managed to save 120 passengers on a plane that had to make a crash-landing because it was “overweight,” according to Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper.

One captain told Dawn that the same plane experienced four other weight-related mishaps over the past three years.

Based on my travels in Pakistan, Mehmood’s apparent defense is somewhat believable. Earlier this summer, I was on a Pakistani International Airlines (PIA) flight that was oversold. Instead of pushing off extra passengers onto another flight, the flight crew allowed one random passenger to crouch on the floor in the cockpit—for a flight over some of the world’s tallest mountains. Domestic airlines in Pakistan also seem far less strict in enforcing restrictions on weight limits for luggage.

But there is also past precedent for a Pakistani pilot being drunk in the cockpit, despite the country’s conservative reputation.

In 2013, authorities in the United Kingdom arrested a PIA pilot and jailed him for nine months after he smelled of alcohol while preparing to fly about 150 passengers from Leeds-Bradford airport to Islamabad. The pilot reportedly had a blood alcohol limit of four times the legal limit for a pilot in the United Kingdom. Whatever the truth is in this case, Pakistani police are taking the matter seriously. Over the weekend, 12 to 15 men scaled the wall in front of Mehmood’s house in Karachi and detained him, Dawn reported.

According to The Express Tribune, the men did not identify themselves, causing Mehmood’s family to report the matter as an “abduction.” They “started beating him before they dragged him outside,” Mehmood’s wife told the newspaper.

Police in Pakistan’s Punjab province, which includes Lahore, later admitted Mehmood has been detained under Pakistan’s counterterrorism ordinance. “He has been booked under ATA on the complaint of the Civil Aviation Authority,” said Haider Ashraf, a senior police official from Lahore. “The CAA says his act nearly caused death to ... passengers.”

Among other things, Pakistan’s counter-terrorism act covers any crime that is “likely to cause death or endangers a person’s life.” Mehmood could face up to 14 years in jail if he is ultimately charged and convicted for a terrorism-related offense that didn’t result in anyone being killed.

In the meantime, Pakistani aviation authorities have sent fresh notices to Pakistani airlines reminding flight crews: Don’t drink and fly.