Ahmedabad, Jun 16: Four days after the horrific crash of an Air India plane claimed 270 lives, 119 victims have so far been identified through DNA matching and 76 bodies, including that of former Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani, were handed over to their families, officials said on Monday.
An official expressed hope that the DNA profiling all the victims will be completed by either Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning.
Rupani was among the 242 passengers and crew members on board the London-bound Air India flight AI-171 that crashed in Ahmedabad on June 12. His mortal remains were handed over to his wife Anjali Rupani and other family members at the city civil hospital.
Authorities are carrying out DNA tests to establish the identity of the victims as many bodies were charred beyond recognition or damaged.
“Till Monday evening, 119 DNA samples have been matched, and 76 bodies have already been handed over to the respective families. These deceased were from different parts of Gujarat and Rajasthan,” Medical Superintendent of Ahmedabad Civil Hospital Dr Rakesh Joshi told reporters.
He expressed hope that the DNA profiling all the victims will be completed by either Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning.
He urged the grief-stricken kin of the victims to not panic over the time-consuming process of matching DNA samples with mortal remains.
“We are trying our best to finish this process as soon as possible. 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,” Joshi asserted.
Ahmedabad Civil Hospital authorities had said on Sunday that samples of 250 victims, including persons on board the ill-fated flight as well as those killed on the ground, had been collected for identification.
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner with 242 persons on board crashed into a medical college complex in Ahmedabad moments after taking off from the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport at 1.39 pm on June 12.
While 241 persons on board the London-bound aircraft died, one passenger miraculously survived. The crash also killed 29 persons on the ground, including five MBBS students.
Govt constituted high-level committee meets, looks into possible causes
A high-level multi-disciplinary committee, set up by the government to look into the Ahmedabad plane crash, on Monday deliberated on various possible theories that could have led to the country’s worst air disaster in decades.
The panel, chaired by Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan, listened to the opinions of various stakeholders about the possible causes of the aircrash and deliberated on steps to be taken to check future occurrence of any such accident, sources said.
In the first meeting of the panel here, the sources said, the focus of the participants was to analyse the possible causes of the aircrash and how to go about in “formulating Standard Operating Procedures for preventing such occurrences in the future”.
Since a separate investigation is also being carried out by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which is looking into the technical aspects of the crash, the panel discussed about the possible causes and lesson to be taken from it, the sources said.
Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu on Saturday said while the AAIB investigation will handle the technical aspects, the high-level committee will provide a holistic, policy-oriented roadmap for future safeguards.
Those who attended the meeting on Monday include representatives from the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Home Ministry, Indian Air Force, Intelligence Bureau, Gujarat government, Directorate General of Civil Aviation, and Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, among others.
The committee is expected to submit its report within three months.
The black box of Air India’s Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plane that crashed on Thursday in Ahmedabad was recovered from the site on Friday evening while officials have also confirmed that the Cockpit Voice Recorder has been found, a crucial discovery to help ascertain the possible cause of the accident.
The aircraft from Ahmedabad to London crashed soon after takeoff on Thursday afternoon. Out of 242 people on board the plane, only one person survived. (PTI)
