SC seeks Centre’s response on plea for judicial probe into Air India crash

The Supreme Court on Friday issued a notice to the Centre on a plea filed by the family of late Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, the Pilot-in-Command of the Air India flight that crashed in Ahmedabad on 12 June, killing over 260 people, seeking a judicially monitored and independent inquiry into the tragedy.

A Bench of justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan took cognisance of submissions made by senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, representing the 91-year-old father of the deceased pilot, who argued that the ongoing investigations by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) were “not independent” and suffered from serious procedural lapses.

During the hearing, Justice Kant sought to allay the petitioner’s concerns, observing that there was no basis to suggest that the pilot was being blamed for the accident. “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,” Justice Kant remarked.

The Bench noted that the preliminary AAIB report contained no indication of pilot fault. Responding to references made to a Wall Street Journal article suggesting pilot error, the Court remarked, “We are not bothered by foreign reports. That is nasty reporting. No one in India believes it was the pilot’s fault.”

The plea contends that the official investigation is “defective and suffers from serious infirmities and perversities”, accusing the authorities of hastily attributing the crash to “pilot error” without comprehensive analysis. The family argued that the preliminary AAIB report, released on 15 June, overlooked key technical factors and “undermined both the integrity of the inquiry and the memory of the deceased crew”.

Central to the petition is the unexplained deployment of the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) — an emergency device that provides power during critical failures — which, according to the plea, was activated at take-off before any input from the cockpit crew. The petition describes this as a potential indicator of an electrical or digital malfunction, suggesting possible faults in the aircraft’s Common Core System (CCS), which integrates avionics, flight controls, and power distribution.

“The investigators ignored the possibility that faults within the CCS triggered the sequence of failures,” the plea stated, adding that the inquiry failed to examine systemic or manufacturing issues linked to the aircraft.

The petition further raised concern over the unauthorised leak of cockpit voice recordings (CVR) to the media, alleging that it led to “character assassination” of the deceased pilots and amounted to “state-facilitated defamation”. It said that selective leaks were used to circulate false narratives, including suggestions of suicidal intent, thereby violating the late pilot’s right to reputation under Article 21 of the Constitution.

The family’s plea also questioned the probe’s failure to consider past safety incidents involving Boeing 787 aircraft, including the Japan Airlines battery fire (2013), ANA electrical failure (2013), and LATAM’s in-flight upset (2024). It argued that this “deliberate narrowing of inquiry” fell short of international standards of air crash investigation.

“Despite known vulnerabilities, the investigators did not seek technical clarifications from Boeing, GE, or Honeywell, nor did they commission independent software forensic or fault-injection testing,” the petition said.

Alleging that the ongoing probe undermines aviation safety and public confidence, the petitioner urged the Supreme Court to direct an impartial judicial inquiry into the crash.

The matter will next be heard after the Centre submits its response to the Court’s notice.

With IANS inputs