India’s top court said on Friday that a preliminary report on an Air India crash that killed 260 people in June does not insinuate anything against the captain. However, it will hear a plea from the pilot’s father on November 10 for an independent probe.
The plea by 91-year-old Pushkar Raj Sabharwal for an investigation by a panel of aviation experts, headed by a retired Supreme Court judge, came weeks after he criticized the government investigation.
He stated that two officials from India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau who visited him had implied that his son, pilot Sumeet Sabharwal, cut the fuel to the plane’s engine after take-off.
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The government has denied such accusations, calling the investigation “very clean” and “very thorough”.
India’s air accidents investigation body published an interim report earlier this year saying the plane’s fuel engine switches had almost simultaneously flipped from run to cutoff just after takeoff.
