Father of AI-171 pilot approaches SC, seeks independent probe into crash

88-yea-old father of Sumeet Sabharwal has approached the Supreme Court

The father of late Captain Sumeet Sabharwal has approached the Supreme Court four months after the shocking Air India crash that claimed the lives of 260 people. He has sought an independent, judicially monitored investigation into the crash.

Eighty-eight-year-old Pushkaraj Sabharwal is the first petitioner in the matter, reports said, while the Federation of Indian Pilots is the second. The petition that the aggrieved father has filed says that the probe into the crash is "profoundly flawed" and that the team investigating the matter is focusing predominantly on the pilots, who are no longer around to defend themselves.

The petition comes after a preliminary report filed by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Board (AAIB), which said that the tragedy was caused by human error.

The petition says, "The current approach of the investigation has resulted in a failure to adequately examine, or rule out, other more plausible technical and procedural factors."

"The petitioners emphasise that 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," it adds.

It further raises questions on the composition of the five-member probe team and says that the team is violating the fundamental principle of natural justice, which states that no person should be a judge in their own case.

"The team is dominated by officers from the DGCA, the state aviation authorities, whose procedures, oversight, and possible lapses are directly implicated in the investigation. Moreover, the officers are placed under the control of the DG, AAIB, thereby creating a situation where the very entities responsible for regulating and overseeing civil aviation are effectively investigating themselves," says the petition.

"Only a judicially monitored, expert-driven investigation, independent of the regulatory authorities, can ensure a thorough, transparent, and credible determination of the true causes of this tragedy, uphold accountability, and prevent a repeat of such catastrophic failures," it further says.

Further, it demands an investigation by a judicially monitored committee chaired by a retired Supreme Court judge and including independent experts from the aviation sector.

It also says that Captain Sabharwal had an "unblemished career spanning over 30 years, with 15,638 hours of incident-free flying, including 8,596 hours on Boeing 787-8 aircraft, without a single reported lapse or incident causing fatalities or otherwise."

Air India flight 171, which was travelling from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick, crashed about 32 seconds after take-off on the afternoon of June 12. All 12 crew members and 229 of the 230 passengers were killed in the crash. The aircraft crashed into the hostel of a medical college in Ahmedabad, killing 19 people and taking the total death toll of the crash to 260.