Air India Crash: Pilot's father moves Supreme Court for judicial inquiry

The 91-year-old father of Air India pilot-in-command in the fatal Ahmedabad crash of June has moved the Supreme Court seeking an independent judicial probe into the incident.

The petition filed by Pushkaraj Sabharwal, father of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, has sought constitution of a judicially monitored committee headed by a retired Supreme Court judge and with independent experts from the aviation sector as its members, to conduct a fair, transparent and technically sound investigation into the crash of Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft.

The aircraft had crashed on June 12 while taking off from Ahmedabad resulting in 260 deaths.

As per the plea jointly filed by Sabharwal and Federation of Indian Pilots, the investigation presently being undertaken by the Union Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and the preliminary report dated June 15 submitted pursuant to that probe are defective and suffers from serious infirmities and perversities.

The petitioners have contended that 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 said.

According to the petition, the current approach of the investigation has resulted in a failure to adequately examine, or rule out, other more plausible technical and procedural factors relating to the Boeing 7that could have contributed to the tragic incident.

The petitioners have emphasised the factual misdirection through selective disclosure, especially against crew who cannot defend themselves, impedes root cause discovery and threatens future flight safety—calling for a neutral judicial lens.

The plea has highlighted the following deficiencies in the probe:

- unexplained RAT deployment prior to crew inputs;

- systemic electrical collapse ignored;

- failure to investigate design-level faults;

- implausible fuel switch movement and misplaced pilot blame;

- comparable Boeing 787 Incidents Ignored.

The petition is yet to be listed for hearing.

The Supreme Court is already seized of another petition filed in this regard by non-governmental organisation Safety Matters Foundation.

In that plea, the Supreme Court is examining whether requisite measures are being taken to ensure a fair, impartial, and expeditious investigation