Civil aviation minister K Rammohan Naidu Kinjarapu on Tuesday said there is "no manipulation or dirty business" taking place in the investigation into the Ahmedabad Air India plane crash that killed 260 people.
Kinjarapu's remarks come against the backdrop of concerns raised over the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau's (AAIB) probe into the fatal crash in Ahmedabad's Meghaninagar.
Late in September, the 91-year-old father of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, one of the two pilots of Air India Flight AI 171 that crashed within minutes of its take-off, alleged that investigating authorities visited him in August and implied that his son cut the fuel to the plane's engines after takeoff.
Pushkar Raj Sabharwal reportedly emailed the Federation of Indian Pilots and said that AAIB officials visited his home on August 30 "under the pretext of offering condolences", and implied that his son, Captain Sabharwal, was the one who moved the fuel switches.
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"During this interaction ... they went beyond their mandate - speaking in innuendos and insinuating, on the basis of selective CVR interpretation and a so-called 'layered voice analysis', that my son had moved the fuel control switches from RUN to CUTOFF after take-off," his email, dated September 17, said.
{{/usCountry}}"During this interaction ... they went beyond their mandate - speaking in innuendos and insinuating, on the basis of selective CVR interpretation and a so-called 'layered voice analysis', that my son had moved the fuel control switches from RUN to CUTOFF after take-off," his email, dated September 17, said.
{{/usCountry}}Earlier, he had also written to the civil aviation ministry, requesting that the Centre open an additional probe into the deadly crash, criticising what he said were the investigators' "selective" releases of information, which had triggered speculation regarding his son's actions.
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Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, aviation minister Rammohan Naidu Kinjarapu said, "There is no manipulation, or there is no dirty business, happening in the investigation. It is a very clean and very thorough process that we are doing according to the rules."
He also said that the final report will take some time, adding that the AIB is doing a "very transparent and independent study on the final report".
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"We do not want to pressure them into coming up with some hasty report. So they are going to take the necessary time for it," Kinjarapu told reporters.
Air India Ahmedabad Crash
The Gatwick-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft, operating from Ahmedabad's Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, crashed into the building of a medical college in Meghaninagar, within minutes of its take off.
The crash left 241 of the 242 on board dead, while 19 others on the ground at the time of the incident also lost their lives, bringing the total toll to 260.