Questions over the integrity of the Air India crash probe resurfaced on Friday as the Supreme Court maintained that the official findings do not cast blame on the cockpit crew, making it clear that the pilot commanding the doomed Ahmedabad-London flight had not been implicated in any way. The observation came as the court agreed to examine a plea seeking a judicially monitored investigation into one of India’s deadliest aviation tragedies.
A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi offered this assurance while hearing the petition moved by Pushkar Raj Sabharwal, father of late Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, who led Air India Flight AI-171 before it crashed shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad on June 12, killing 265 people. The accident claimed the lives of 241 passengers and crew, 19 persons on the ground, and five others who later succumbed to injuries.
During the hearing, senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for the petitioner, questioned the preliminary findings of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), alleging that the report appeared to rely excessively on cockpit dialogue and leaned towards a pilot-error narrative while glossing over technical failures that merited deeper scrutiny.
Seeking to dispel this impression, the Bench told the petitioner not to carry the burden of misplaced blame. “This is an extremely unfortunate accident. But you should not carry the burden that your son is being blamed. We can always clarify that nobody, and especially the pilot, can be blamed for the tragedy,” the judges said.
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The court noted that the AAIB’s preliminary report contained “no insinuation against the pilot at all”, adding that the document merely recorded one cockpit exchange concerning fuel control switches. “Whatever could be the reason for the tragedy, it is not the pilots,” the Bench remarked, stressing that the purpose of the probe was preventive rather than punitive.
According to the AAIB, the aircraft’s fuel control switches “transitioned” to the “CUTOFF” position three seconds after take-off, starving both engines of fuel. The cockpit voice recorder captured one pilot asking the other “why did he cut off?”, to which the colleague responded that he had not done so. The report, however, did not definitively state whether the switch movement was inadvertent or the result of a deeper malfunction.
Sankaranarayanan also alleged that investigators had subjected the family to inappropriate personal questioning and pointed to international media reports, particularly one in The Wall Street Journal, suggesting pilot error. The court brushed aside such reports. “With respect, you should have filed a suit against The Wall Street Journal in an American court,” the judges said, calling the reportage incongruent with the factual record.
The Bench issued notice on the petition and tagged it with a pending plea filed by the NGO Safety Matters, to be heard on 10 November. It also sought replies from the Centre and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on the demand for a court-supervised inquiry.
The court had earlier criticised the “selective” public leaking of portions of the AAIB report, calling early media conclusions “irresponsible”. The petition alleges that the official investigation is “defective”, pointing to potential electrical or software malfunctions, including the activation of the aircraft’s Ram Air Turbine (RAT) before any pilot inputs, that, if independently examined, may offer a different explanation for the crash.
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