Air India sends grieiving British families wrong remains

India’s government officials sent the wrong remains to several British families whose loved ones died in a plane crash late last month, according to an aviation lawyer representing them. 

While some of the dead were cremated or buried in India, the remains of at least 12 victims had been repatriated, the Guardian reported.

“I’ve been sitting down in the homes of these lovely British families over the last month, and the first thing they want is their loved ones back,” said James Healy-Pratt, an international aviation lawyer who is representing the grieving families.

“However, some of them have got the wrong remains, and they are clearly distraught over this. It has been going on for a couple of weeks, and I think these families deserve an explanation,” Healy-Pratt added.

Comingled body parts

In one case, a coroner in London discovered that the DNA of several bodies had been co-mingled in one of the caskets, Healy-Pratt told UK news agency PA Media.

“My understanding was that the co-mingling was at the very beginning, which alerted Dr Wilcox to the fact that she had to be 100 per cent assiduous about checking the identification of the incoming remains,” the lawyer said. “She was then able to determine that one particular loved one was not at all who the family thought they were.”

All but one of 242 passengers and crew members were killed on June 12, after an Air India jet lost momentum and hurtled into a densely populated neighbourhood in Ahmedabad, western India. The survivor was seen walking away from the crash area in a state of despair and confusion.

Aviation officials have not yet released the cause of the crash. Still, a preliminary report suggested that the fuel control switches in the cockpit of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner had been flipped, depriving the engines of power.

Fuel switches were off

A black box audio reveals that at one point, one of the pilots asks the other why he flipped the fuel switches, according to CNN. The other pilot responds that he did not.

Moments later, the switches were flipped to turn the fuel supply back on. Both engines relit, and one began to “progress to recovery,” but it was too late to detain the aeroiplane’s vertiginous descent.

The families of three victims said they were “deeply troubled” by the Wednesday revelations, and demanded that the authorities act with “care, co-ordination and respect.”

“Recent developments have only confirmed what many feared: that serious mistakes may have been made, and that the dignity and rights of victims and their families were not safeguarded as they should have been,” they said in a statement.

Unacceptably poor chain of custody

While those relatives of victims who received remains by mistake, the family who received the “comingled” body parts were able to sort them out and hold a funeral service.

Healy-Pratt stated that the families had contacted their MPs, the Foreign Office, and the offices of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary.

“On the known evidence, the chain of custody of these lost loved ones was unacceptably poor,” the lawyer said. “We are investigating the causes of those failures and demanding answers on behalf of these deserving British families.”