Air India crash: Preliminary report doesn’t blame pilot Sumeet Sabharwal, Centre clarifies in SC

The Centre on Thursday told the Supreme Court that the Air India pilot had not been blamed in the Aircraft Accident Investigation Board (AAIB) preliminary report into the June 12 plane crash that claimed 265 lives, including those of both pilots and crew members.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told a Bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi that an AAIB team was set up to look into the crash under an international regime, and the investigation was currently underway. There’s a statutory provision for it, he added.

“The AAIB inquiry is not for apportion blame on anyone. It is only to clarify the cause so that the same does not happen again,” the Bench said.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing an NGO, said that a parallel inquiry such as a court of inquiry should probe into the accident. A pilots’ federation has stated that these airplanes cannot be trusted and there is a huge risk on people flying in their aircraft, he said.

Noting that these proceedings should not become a fight between airlines, the Bench issued notice to the Centre and DGCA on a petition filed by Pushkar Raj Sabharwal — the father of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal who died in the crash and posted the matter for further hearing after two weeks.

“You should not carry this burden that your son is being blamed... Nobody can blame him for anything… No one in India believes it was the pilot's fault… It was an accident,” the Bench – the Bench had said on November 7.

“It’s extremely unfortunate that this crash took place, but you should not carry this burden that your son is being blamed... Nobody can blame him for anything… No one in India believes it was the pilot's fault… It was an accident. There is no insinuation against him even in the preliminary report," Justice Kant had told 91-year-old Pushkar Raj Sabharwal.

Expressing concern over the selective leak of the preliminary inquiry report, which led to a media narrative blaming pilot error for the crash of the London-bound Air India Flight AI171, the Bench had earlier noted that certain aspects of the July 12 AAIB preliminary report indicating lapses on the part of pilots were "irresponsible".

The pilot’s father and the FIP have filed a petition filed under seeking a court-monitored committee comprising a retired judge of the Supreme Court and independent aviation and technical experts to conduct a fair, transparent and technically robust probe into the crash.

The practitioners have urged the top court to direct that all investigations carried out so far, including the preliminary report dated July 12, be treated as closed and all records, data, and evidence be transferred to the new inquiry panel to be set up.

Terming the ongoing probe as “incomplete, biased, and technically unsound”, the petitioners said it undermined India’s obligations under International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Annexe 13, which mandated an independent investigation authority.

The current five-member team is dominated by officials from the DGCA and the AAIB, the very entities responsible for regulatory oversight, thereby violating the principle of nemo judex in causa sua (no one should be a judge in their own cause), they alleged.

The AAIB report predominantly focussed on the deceased pilots, who were no longer there to defend themselves and that the report failed to examine or eliminate other more plausible technical and procedural causes of the crash, the petitioners submitted.