NEW DELHI, March 16 -- A top Indian military Air Force officer has ruled out the possibility that the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 could have flown over India on way to Kazakhstan- Turkmenistan in Central Asia, said local media Sunday.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Saturday said the missing plane could have flown into "two possible corridors." The northern one was identified as stretching from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand.

"If the jetliner had tried to cross the Indian mainland, our primary radars (which bounce radio signals off targets) would have picked it up despite its transponders being switched off ( secondary radars beam signals that request information from a plane's transponders)," the Times of India online quoted a top Indian Air Force officer as saying.

If an "unidentified" plane had been picked up flouting prescribed procedures or with switched-off transponders or not " squawking" IFF (identification, friend or foe) codes, a series of "air defense measures" would have kicked in -- including the scrambling of fighters -- to "detect, identify, intercept and destroy" the intruder, said the report.

However, senior Indian Air Force and Navy officers admitted there were "a few gaps" in India's civil and military radar networks but stressed it would be "virtually impossible" for a jetliner to fly undetected across the Indian mainland, said the report.

"The five Airports Authority of India radars at Delhi, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Mumbai are integrated with Indian Air Force 's air defense network.

"Why also forget the robust air defense networks of countries like Pakistan, fully-geared towards India, or the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan or Iran for that matter, all of which would have been on this so-called flight arc," the officer was quoted as saying.

Former Indian Air Force vice-chief Air Marshal P. K. Barbora was quoted as saying "both India and Pakistan are very wary of any blip that comes up on their radars...it's very unlikely that a plane could have flown across the vast stretch of land without being detected by one or some other country."

"An aircraft flying low to avoid radars would not be able to go such a long distance," he said.

Indian officials are of the opinion that MH370, hijacked or otherwise, probably went down in the Bay of Bengal or southern Indian Ocean after being diverted and flying close to the Strait of Malacca, the report said.

India has been concentrating its search as part of the ongoing multinational hunt for the missing jetliner.

The Navy, Indian Air Force and Coast Guard are scanning an area spanning over 250,000 square kilometers in the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal with six warships and extensive aerial surveillance by aircraft like P-8I long-range maritime patrol planes, medium-range Dornier-228s and a C-130J Super Hercules with electro-optic and infra-red sensors. But so far, no sighting or detection has been reported, according to military sources here.