Civil Aviation Minister K. Rammohan Naidu Kinjarapu has assured that there is “no manipulation or dirty business” in the investigation of the Air India crash in Ahmedabad that killed 260 people. The minister made the remarks amid concerns about the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau’s (AAIB) handling of the probe.
The concerns arose after Pushkar Raj Sabharwal, father of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, one of the pilots of Flight AI 171, claimed that AAIB officials visited him in August and suggested that his son had shut off the plane’s engines after takeoff. In an email to the Federation of Indian Pilots, he said the officials “went beyond their mandate” and made insinuations based on selective interpretation of the cockpit voice recorder and voice analysis. He had also requested the civil aviation ministry to conduct an additional inquiry, criticizing the investigators for selectively releasing information that fueled speculation about his son.
Addressing reporters on Tuesday, Minister Kinjarapu emphasized that the investigation is being conducted in a “clean, thorough, transparent, and independent” manner. He added that the final report will take time, as authorities do not want to rush the process.
The crash involved a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner operating from Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, which went down into a medical college building in Meghaninagar shortly after takeoff. Of the 242 people on board, 241 died, and 19 people on the ground also lost their lives, bringing the total death toll to 260.
