DNA profiling for Air India crash victims may end today, kin await results
A group of 54 experts across Forensic Science Laboratories are working round-the-clock to carry out profiling and matching tests
The painstaking process of DNA profiling of all the victims of the Air India Dreamliner crash is expected to finish by Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning, a top doctor said on Monday, potentially exacerbating the wait of scores of relatives who continue to camp in Ahmedabad.
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A group of 54 experts across Forensic Science Laboratories in Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, and Rajkot are working round-the-clock to carry out profiling and matching tests. But there is still no final word on the official toll on what is India’s worst single-aircraft tragedy that killed all but one of the 242 on board, and at least 30in the hostel building the AI-171 jet rammed into, or in the neighbourhood.
Dr Rakesh Joshi, superintendent of Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, said that 119 DNA samples have matched with the victims of the crash. Using these, 76 bodies have been handed over to families. Another eight bodies, which didn’t require DNA sampling, were returned on Friday.
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At least 14 more bodies will be returned by Tuesday morning.
“The DNA profiling all the victims will be completed by either Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning,” Joshi said. “We are trying our best to finish this process as soon as possible.”
One of the people identified by DNA profiling was former chief minister Vijay Rupani, whose final rites were conducted in Rajkot on Monday.
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The Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick crashed 33 seconds after taking off on Thursday afternoon and rammed into the medical college hostel, marking the worst air tragedy in the country in three decades. Thick plumes of black smoke billowed from the debris of AI-171 at the crash site roughly 3km from the Ahmedabad airport premises.
The aircraft – which carried almost a full load of 125,000 litres of fuel – entered a slow descent shortly after taking off at 1.38pm, with its landing gear still extended before exploding into a huge fireball upon impact. The twin-engine plane had reached an altitude of 625 feet (190.5 meters) at a speed of 174 knots, according to data from Flightradar24.
Since Thursday, scores of relatives have trooped into Ahmedabad, their wait turning from hours into days as authorities struggled to identify charred bodies and recover samples.
At Dr Pratik Joshi’s home in Ahmedabad, for example, 50-60 relatives from Rajasthan’s Banswara are anxiously awaiting DNA confirmation to claim the remains of Pratik, 41, his wife Dr. Komi Vyas, and their children — Miraya, 8, and twins Nakul and Pradyut, 5.
“We are caught in a nightmare, unable to sleep or stay awake,” said Anil Vyas, Komi’s father. “They’ve confirmed Pratik’ identity, but we’re still waiting for the others. Nothing is in our hands…Hospital authorities have promised answers by tomorrow. The wait gets heavier with time,” he told HT.
Dr. Pratik Joshi, a 41-year-old radiologist, was relocating his family from India to London for a new chapter. The family had captured their joy in a selfie on board, moments before the crash.
Other families grew more impatient.
“They told us 72 hours. It has been four days now. We haven’t got a call from the hospital authorities yet. I don’t know when I will get to see the body of my brother and his family members so we can lay them to rest,” said Imtiyaz Ali, whose brother Javed Ali, sister-in-law Mariyam, and their children Aman Ali and Zayn Ali were killed in the crash.
`Javed is of Indian origin and Mariyam is of Pakistani origin. “The doctors explained to me that through DNA matching of my blood sample, they can confirm the DNA sample of my brother Javed. Then through his DNA, they can confirm the DNA samples of his two children,” Imtiyaz said. Finally, the confirmed samples of the two children would be used to identify Mariyam.
Dr Joshi urged the grief-stricken kin of the victims to not panic, but acknowledged that complaints were mounting. “Some are complaining that the results have not come even after 72 hours. I appeal to them not to panic because this is a very important process with legal implications. We will call them as soon as results arrive,” he said.
He underlined that delays were on various accounts. “Two foreign nationals will arrive on Tuesday for DNA testing, …11 families who have lost multiple relatives in crash have received one body but are still awaiting the release of others…18 other families, whose loved ones’ DNA has been matched, have yet to inform authorities when they will claim the remains for final rites,” he said.
Rohit Patel from Nadiad shared that hospital authorities confirmed a DNA match for his brother Anil Patel’s daughter-in-law, Puja Patel, but added that he was still awaiting results for HIS WHO Harshit Patel. “We’re heartbroken and unsure what to do next. We’ve asked them to release both bodies together so we can perform their final rites,” he said.
Doctors cautioned that the nature of the remains – many of the bodies are charred due to the intense heat of the fire that accompanied the crash – is making extraction of viable DNA challenging. A doctor from Ahmedabad’s Civil Hospital told HT that often samples of multiple relatives needed to strengthen statistical certainty, especially when the DNA is degraded. “We may need to test several relatives—parents, siblings, children—and if the body is dismembered, all recovered parts are tested to confirm they belong to the same individual before release,” the doctor said, requesting anonymity.
Dr. Saumil P. Merchant, professor and head of forensic medicine at Narendra Modi Medical College, said that under normal conditions, a DNA report takes about three months due to the stepwise nature of profiling: sample cleaning, DNA isolation, quality assessment, amplification, sequencing, and matching.
“In this case, the timeline has been compressed to just 72 hours by adopting a 24x7 operational system involving multiple forensic labs, including the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Gandhinagar—one of India’s largest— that can process around 130 samples at once,” Merchant told HT.
