The 91-year-old father, late Captain Sumeet Sabarwal, approached the Supreme Court on Thursday to order an independent investigation into the Ahmedabad Air India crash that killed 260 people in June.
The
plea by the father, Pushkar Raj Sabharwal, for an investigation by a panel of aviation experts headed by a retired Supreme Court judge, comes weeks after he criticised the government investigation.
The plea filed in the Supreme Court states that the preliminary report of the AAIB suffers from serious infirmities, as the report implausibly asserts the cause of the crash to pilot error, while overlooking other glaring and plausible systemic causes that demand independent scrutiny and investigation of the incident.
“An incomplete and prejudiced inquiry, without identification of the exact cause of the accident, endangers the lives of future passengers and undermines aviation safety at large, causing a violation of Article 21 of the Constitution of India,” the plea stated.
Captain Sumeet Sabarwal’s father said two officials from India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) who visited him had implied that his son cut the fuel to the plane’s engine after take-off.
Preliminary Report Suggested Fuel Of Both Engines Cut Off
A preliminary AAIB report suggested that the fuel supply to both engines of the aircraft was cut off within a gap of one second, causing confusion in the cockpit soon after takeoff, a major cause behind the crash of AI-171.
“In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cut off. The other pilot responded that he did not do so,” the report stated.
However, amid speculations following the release of the preliminary report, the AAIB had clarified that it was too early to draw “definite conclusions” on what led to the crash and that the final report would identify the root causes, urging everyone to refrain from spreading premature narratives.