NEW DELHI: 91-year-old father of deceased Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, and the Federation of Indian Pilots have filed a plea in the Supreme Court for a court-monitored inquiry headed by a former apex court judge into the June 12 crash of Air India flight AI171 in Ahmedabad that killed 260 people.
Pushkaraj Sabharwal has sought a “fair, transparent and technically robust” investigation into the tragic incident.
His plea contended, “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.”
On September 22, the top court said certain aspects of the AAIB preliminary report on the crash indicated lapses on the part of pilots, and had issued notices to the Centre and the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on another plea seeking an independent, fair and expeditious probe.
The petition, filed on October 10, made the Union Ministry of Civil Aviation, the DGCA , and the Director General of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Board (AAIB) as respondents, and is likely to come up for hearing after Diwali vacation.
It sought directions for the constitution of an independent committee, comprising aviation and technical experts also, to probe the crash that killed 229 passengers, 12 crew members, and 19 people on the ground.
The petition said that the official investigation conducted by the AAIB and the DGCA is “defective, biased, and technically unsound”.
The preliminary report, issued on July 12, 2025, is alleged to have wrongly attributed the cause of the crash to pilot error, while ignoring multiple systemic and technical failures that could have played a decisive role.
The petition claimed the inquiry team, rather than undertaking a comprehensive technical investigation, appears to have disproportionately focused on the deceased pilots, who can no longer defend themselves and overlooked plausible evidence of electrical, software, or design-level failures.
The plea said that such an approach not only tarnishes the reputation of the deceased crew but also undermines aviation safety, violating the right to life and dignity under Article 21 of the Constitution.
The father of the late Sumeet Sabharwal said his son had an “unblemished career spanning over 30 years, with 15,638 hours of incident-free flying, including 8,596 hours on Boeing 787-8 aircraft, without a single reported lapse or incident causing fatalities or otherwise”.
The ill-fated aircraft had taken off from Ahmedabad for London Gatwick but crashed within minutes, impacting the BJ Medical College hostel located less than a nautical mile from the end of runway.
The debris was strewn over an area of nearly 1,000 by 400 feet, indicating a high-energy impact.
The Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) failed to activate, and both the pilot-in-command Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and co-pilot Captain Clive Kunder lost their lives in the crash, the plea said.
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