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The 91-year-old father of an Air India pilot who died along with 259 others in a tragic plane crash in Ahmedabad in June this year has now moved the Supreme Court seeking an independent probe into the incident.
In his petition to the apex court, Pushkarraj Sabharwal highlighted that the investigation into the plane crash focused on “pilot error”, failing to investigate other possible causes. He has requested that the investigation be monitored by a retired SC judge.
His son Captain Sumeet Sabharwal was the pilot-in-command of Air India flight AI171, which crashed minutes after takeoff on June 12, 2025.
Sabharwal has filed the petition with the support of the Federation of Indian Pilots.
He first raised concerns about the investigation with the Civil Aviation Ministry and the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) in August.
He wrote to the ministry that “selective leaks” from the ongoing investigation had resulted in defamatory and unverified claims about his late son and demanded an independent investigation.
However, this is not the first such petition that has been received by the Supreme Court.
Aviation safety NGO, Safety Matters Foundation, had filed a public interest litigation (PIL) on September 19 demanding an independent, court-monitored investigation.
The petition challenged the preliminary report of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) released on July 12, which attributed the accident to the “moving of the fuel cutoff switch” from “RUN” to “CUTOFF”.
At that time the court had said that the leaking of such information was “unfortunate and irresponsible”. A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh had said that such disclosures compromise the dignity and privacy of the victims’ families and stressed that reports of this nature should remain confidential until the investigation is completed.