Grieving British families of the Air India crash victims have received the wrong bodies to bury in a bungled repatriation scheme.
A lawyer acting for the bereaved said that the remains of several victims had been wrongly identified, with one family forced to abandon funeral plans after allegedly being told the coffin contained a different, unidentified body.
Only one passenger survived when the Air India flight 171 lost power and crashed into a building, seconds after departing Ahmedabad for London Gatwick, killing 260 people.
Cockpit audio recovered from the flight recorders shows the plane’s junior first officer, Clive Kunder, asking its captain, Sumeet Sabharwal, why he had flipped the switches, starving the engines of fuel, according to a number of international media reports citing sources in the investigation.
Of the passengers and crew members who died, 52 were Britons.
James Healy-Pratt, a lawyer representing several British families, said that the remains of at least 12 British victims had been repatriated.
He told the Daily Mail: “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. But 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.”
In another instance, it has been reported that the remains of more than one person were put into a single coffin, and had to be separated before the funeral.
Many of those killed were buried or cremated shortly afterwards in line with Hindu, Muslim and other religious customs.
Due to the nature of the crash, which saw temperatures reach 1,500C as a large fireball engulfed the area, many of the victims had been burnt beyond recognition.
This meant that many families received their loved one’s remains from the Civil Hospital in a plastic container, after being asked to supply DNA samples to help with the identification process.
However, the mishandling of repatriations was only uncovered when Dr Fiona Wilcox, the senior coroner for inner west London, sought to verify their identities by matching them with DNA from their families.
Mr Healy-Pratt continued: “If [it] isn’t their relative, the question is, who is it in that coffin? Presumably, it’s another passenger, and their relatives have been given the wrong remains.
“The coroner also has a problem because she has an unidentified person in her jurisdiction.”
As a result, Sir Keir Starmer is expected to raise concerns over the errors during a meeting with his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, during his state visit to the UK this week.
In response, the Indian foreign ministry said the remains were handled with the “utmost professionalism” and that they were continuing to work with the UK on addressing any concerns.
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