NEW DELHI:
Supreme Court sought on Monday responses from DGCA, Aircraft Accidents Investigation Bureau and the Centre on steps taken to conduct an independent, impartial and expeditious probe into the crash of Air India's June 12 London-bound flight.
The court told PIL petitioner NGO 'Safety Matters Foundation' that its demand to make public details of the flight data recorder could have serious consequences for relatives of the pilots.
All passengers and crew, barring one, were killed in the crash. "We have seen how one single sentence from the preliminary inquiry report was plucked out by western and Indian media to lay the blame on pilot error. Such selective reporting causes immense agony... Confidentiality of the investigations should be maintained till the submission of the final report," Justice Surya Kant said.
Appearing for the NGO, Prashant Bhushan said even after more than 100 days, people do not know the exact cause of the crash, even as experts are of the opinion that electrical system failure of the Boeing aircraft cut off fuel supply to the engine. "Releasing FDR data would enable independent experts to analyse it and help reach a logical conclusion," he said.
The bench of Justices Surya Kant and N K Singh said selective release would enable all these experts to sit in podcasts and give their opinion, running many parallel theories. Bhushan then questioned the fairness of the investigation, saying the five-member probe team included three DGCA officers, which could also be under scrutiny for not carrying out regular safety checks on aircraft under the airlines.
The NGO said, "The preliminary report is incomplete, selective, and lacking in transparency, thereby undermining credibility of the investigative process and the trust of the travelling public. By withholding critical data, omitting safety recommendations, disregarding documented technical anomalies, and prematurely attributing blame to the pilots, the respondent has created a skewed narrative that fails to serve the preventive purpose of an air accident investigation."
On August 8, a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi had refused to entertain a petition seeking safety audit of every aircraft of Air India and rebuked the petitioner for seeking the audit of only one airline and not all airlines.
"It was a very unfortunate incident. But this is not the time to run down airlines. You must approach the DGCA and the central govt on the issue of safety and security of passengers. If they do not take any action, then we can step in," the Supreme Court bench had said.
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