THE Supreme Court on Friday said no one blamed the chief pilot of the Air India Dreamliner for the June 12 crash, which claimed 260 lives, and asked his 91-year-old father not to carry any emotional burden.

 

“There is no insinuation against him even in the preliminary report,” a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi said, emphasising that if necessary, the court will clarify that the pilot is not to be blamed for the “unfortunate” plane crash. The top court issued notice to the Centre and the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on a plea of Pushkaraj Sabharwal, the father of deceased pilot Captain Sumeet Sabharwal.

 

Pushkaraj Sabharwal and the Federation of Indian Pilots have moved the Supreme Court for a court-monitored inquiry headed by a former apex court judge into the crash of Air India flight AI171 in Ahmedabad. “First of all, it was an unfortunate plane crash and secondly, you should not carry a burden on yourself that your son is being blamed. The pilot is not to be blamed for the plane crash. It was an accident,” the bench told senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for Pushkaraj Sabharwal.

 

“No one in the county believes that it was the fault of the pilot,” it said. Sankaranarayanan said it all started after US publication ‘Wall Street Journal’ put out a news report pointing to errors on the part of the pilot that led to the plane crash and citing unnamed Government sources. The bench said, “It was a nasty reporting only to blame India. We are not bothered by foreign media reports. No one in the country believes that it was the fault of the pilot.”