THE SUPREME COURT ON THURSDAY sought a response from the Central government on a petition filed by Pushkar Raj Sabharwal, father of the late Pilot-in-Command of the ill-fated London-bound Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner that crashed shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad airport, killing all 260 people on board. The Centre, through Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, meanwhile maintained that no blame was being cast on the pilot.
A Bench of Chief Justice-designate Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi issued notice on the plea, even as the Solicitor General attempted to allay concerns that the investigation was attributing fault to the deceased pilot.
“There is an international convention… there’s ICAO [‘International Civil Aviation Organisation’]… there is a regime in place. Suppose some foreigners were also victims — those countries send their representatives for investigation. I understand the feelings of the father… there’s no blame attributed to anyone. Since there was some misconception, the Ministry of Civil Aviation issued a press release,” Mehta told the Bench.
Sounding a note of caution, he added, “Any interference by anyone might be counter-productive to the investigation that is ongoing.”
Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for Sabharwal, however insisted that the regime of investigation referred to by the Solicitor General had not been followed. “Let them file their reply,” he said.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for NGO Safety Matters Foundation (‘SMF’), said, “There have been several system failures in 787s after the crash… everybody flying in these aircraft is at risk. Pilots’ associations have said they need to be grounded immediately.” He said that under the rules of the government itself, this kind of serious accident requires a court inquiry and not just an Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (‘AAIB’) inquiry.
“There have been several system failures in 787s after the crash… everybody flying in these aircraft is at risk,” advocate Prashant Bhushan claimed.
In response to the tone of submissions, Justice Kant cautioned, “Let’s not pre-judge anything. It should not look like a fight between airlines.”
Addressing concerns about any alleged attempts to blame the pilot, Justice Bagchi pointed out that the AAIB inquiry was not meant for apportioning blame but to ascertain causes and recommend preventive measures.
Earlier, on September 22, issuing notice to the Centre on a petition by SMF, a Bench of Justices Kant and Bagchi had clarified that notice was being issued “for the limited purpose of ensuring a free, fair, impartial, independent, and expeditious investigation by an expert body, maintaining full confidentiality, returnable on 10.11.2025.”
When the Solicitor General informed the Court that a similar petition had been filed by a student, Justice Kant said the Court would not entertain it, remarking that the student should focus on his studies.
Pilot’s father’s plea criticises ongoing enquiry
Pushkar Raj Sabharwal, father of late Captain Sumeet Sabharwal — Pilot-in-Command of the ill-fated Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner — has approached the Supreme Court seeking a judicially monitored, independent inquiry into the crash. He, along with the Federation of Indian Pilots (‘FIP’), has sought the constitution of a committee headed by a retired Supreme Court judge and comprising independent aviation experts to conduct a fair, transparent and technically sound investigation.
The plea strongly criticises the ongoing inquiry by the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (‘DGCA’), calling the process and the preliminary report of June 15 “defective, perfunctory and riddled with serious errors and inconsistencies.” It urges the Court to consider the DGCA inquiry closed and to transfer all evidence, data and materials to the proposed independent panel.
“Respondents have conducted a perfunctory, biased, and technically deficient investigation into the crash of Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner (VT-ANB), ignoring critical inconsistencies, material evidence, and plausible systemic causes, thereby undermining the credibility of the inquiry,” the petition states.
The petitioners allege that the DGCA prematurely attributed the crash to pilot error without any comprehensive analysis or corroborative evidence — an approach they describe as “arbitrary, perverse and violative of Articles 14 and 21.”
They point out that the preliminary report failed to examine crucial technical aspects, including Ram Air Turbine (‘RAT’) deployment, possible malfunction of Boeing’s Common Core System (‘CCS’), and simultaneous failures of multiple redundant safety and data systems — indicating a potential systemic electrical collapse rather than pilot error.
Describing the DGCA’s conclusion as “inherently implausible and contrary to flight data,” the plea says that RAT deployment occurred before any manual pilot input, undermining the pilot-error theory.
Describing the DGCA’s conclusion as “inherently implausible and contrary to flight data,” the plea says that RAT deployment occurred before any manual pilot input, undermining the pilot-error theory. The investigators’ failure to correlate crew inputs with RAT activation, it adds, shows “non-application of mind and suppression of material facts.”
The petition also faults the DGCA for ignoring warnings from aviation experts regarding possible design-level or software integration failures in Boeing’s CCS system. “The omission to carry out independent software forensic analysis or fault-injection testing has compromised the integrity of the findings and defeated the objective of an impartial technical inquiry envisaged under Annex 13 of the Chicago Convention,” it states.