New Delhi, Nov 7 The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the Centre on a plea filed by the family of late Captain Sumeet Sabharwal -- the Pilot-in-Command of the ill-fated Air India flight that crashed in Ahmedabad on June 12, claiming over 260 lives -- seeking an independent and judicially monitored probe into the tragedy.
A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan took note of the submissions made by senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing on behalf of the 91-year-old father of the deceased commander, that the ongoing investigation by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) was “not independent”.
During the hearing, Justice Kant-led, allaying the petitioner’s apprehension that his son was being unfairly blamed for the accident, remarked: “It’s extremely unfortunate, this crash, but you should not carry this burden that your son is being blamed. Nobody can blame him for anything.”
It added that the preliminary AAIB report contained no insinuation of pilot fault, noting that the brief cockpit exchange cited in the report did not attribute any blame. When the petitioner's side flagged a Wall Street Journal report suggesting pilot error, the apex court declined to attach any significance to such material, stating: “We are not bothered by foreign reports. That is nasty reporting. No one in India believes it was the pilot’s fault.”
The plea alleged that the ongoing investigation is "defective and suffers from serious infirmities and perversities".
The preliminary report, issued on June 15, attributed the crash to "pilot error, while overlooking other glaring and plausible systemic causes".
"The report hastily infers the incident to pilot error, without any corroborative evidence or comprehensive technical analysis, thereby undermining both the integrity of the inquiry and the memory of the deceased crew," it added.
The petition raised questions on the unexplained deployment of the Ram Air Turbine (RAT), an emergency device, at take-off, before any crew inputs were made.
"This premature activation is a direct indicator of an electrical or digital malfunction," the petition stated, contending that the investigation "ignored the possibility that faults in the Common Core System (CCS), integrating avionics, flight controls, power distribution, and software, may have triggered the sequence of failures".
The petition also questioned the selective and unauthorised leak of cockpit voice recordings (CVR) into the public domain, calling it an act of maligning the deceased pilots without proof, amounting to state-facilitated defamation and mental cruelty to their families.
"These selective leaks have fuelled a malicious media campaign, resulting in the character assassination of Late Capt. Sumeet Sabharwal," the petition said.
It further alleged that false narratives suggesting suicidal intent were circulated, thereby violating his fundamental right to reputation under Article 21 of the Constitution.
The petition questioned the investigation for failing to account for prior incidents involving Boeing 787 aircraft, including the JAL battery fire (2013), ANA electrical failure (2013), and LATAM’s inflight upset (2024).
"The investigator’s failure to engage with this historical pattern demonstrates a deliberate narrowing of inquiry inconsistent with international standards of air crash investigation," the plea said.
"Despite these known vulnerabilities, the investigation failed to seek technical clarifications from Boeing, GE, or Honeywell, or to commission independent software forensic or fault-injection testing," it added.
The petition stated that the current investigative approach "not only undermines aviation safety and public confidence but also violates the principles of justice and fairness".
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