Investigative officials stand at the site of Air India Boeing 787 which crashed on June 12, 2025 in Ahmedabad, India. Photo / Getty Images
Vishwash Kumar Ramesh spends most of his days in his bedroom at his home in Leicester, the United Kingdom, shunning conversation and trying to make sense of the events of June 12, 2025.
Seven months on, he is still struggling to come to terms with his status as the sole survivor of Air India Flight 171, which crashed on that day and claimed the lives of 260 people, including his younger brother Ajay.
Ramesh, 39, is also the sole witness to what happened inside the Gatwick-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner in its final moments, and a comment he made from his hospital bed has taken on ever-increasing significance as the search for the truth goes on.
Moments after take-off in Ahmedabad, “the lights started flickering green and white”, he said.
Just 32 seconds after it left the ground, the aircraft ploughed into a building, having suffered a catastrophic loss of thrust.
Two opposing theories about what caused the crash – and the significance of those flickering lights – are now being examined by international investigators in what has become an increasingly bitter and politicised battle to seize the narrative of the tragedy.
Did one of the pilots deliberately sabotage the aircraft, as was initially suggested? Or was the aircraft itself faulty, as the families of the pilot and co-pilot – and a growing number of others – believe?
Much is at stake as India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) prepares to publish its final report this year.
The families of the men who were at the controls of the aircraft are convinced they are being scapegoated for one of the worst air disasters of recent times in order to minimise the financial and reputational damage to the £140 billion ($321b) United States industrial giant Boeing and its suppliers.
They say evidence has been selectively released to the media in order to smear their loved ones, who are not alive to defend themselves, and that the facts are being slotted into a predetermined explanation for why the aircraft came down.
They believe that the real reason for the crash is an electrical fault, possibly the result of a water leak, that caused the lights to flicker as Ramesh described, but also triggering the disastrous loss of thrust. There is mounting evidence to suggest that they could be right.
The alternative is too awful for them to contemplate: that one of the pilots murdered hundreds of people as collateral damage in a suicide.
Entire countries now appear to have taken sides, with parties in the US pushing the theory that Sumeet Sabharwal, the 56-year-old captain, deliberately crashed the aircraft, and India favouring the idea that Boeing is to blame.
Boeing’s share price, which hit US$430 in 2019, collapsed to around US$100 after two disasters involving 737 Max aircraft led to the lengthy grounding of the entire world fleet of that aircraft type later that year, and has never gone above US$269 since.
The 737 Max tragedies, which claimed 346 lives in total, cost Boeing an estimated £15b in fines, compensation and legal fees and another £45b in cancelled orders. It can ill afford a repeat.
“We have realised that the people who should be taking responsibility for the Air India crash are instead trying to put everything on Sumeet,” a member of the pilot’s family told the Telegraph.
“First, a small, selective part of the cockpit conversation was picked and selectively mentioned in the preliminary report to create a narrative against him. After that, a sustained media campaign was run, first to question his professionalism and then his mental health.
“It’s sad to see a powerful lobby tarnishing the reputation of Sumeet. He was a gentle soul. A calm, cheerful, disciplined person and a professional pilot.”
Whether they are right, or whether they are grasping at straws in order to preserve his memory should become clear in the coming months, but there is already enough evidence in the public domain to suggest that one of the two sides is likely to question the investigation’s outcome.
The AAIB has summoned Sabharwal’s nephew, Captain Varun Anand, to give evidence to the investigation, which the Federation of Indian Pilots is opposing, saying it “gives rise to a serious apprehension that the investigation is proceeding on a preconceived narrative seeking to portray or attribute responsibility to the deceased flight crew, rather than objectively examining systemic, mechanical or operational causes”.
Ed Pierson, a retired Boeing senior manager and now the executive director of the US-based Foundation for Aviation Safety, says: “When you step back and look at the bigger picture, we believe there are forces at play here that have good reason to blame the pilots – gigantic financial, legal and reputational reasons.
“Our position from the outset has been that before you rush to blame the pilots, you need to rule out all potential systems failures, and that has not been the case.
“Our organisation believes there are many potential systems failures that could have occurred and caused this tragedy.”
In fact, Pierson says, 787s have been plagued by engineering, manufacturing and quality control problems throughout their history, and this particular 787 had been troubled by multiple issues from the day it left the factory.
June 12 was a hot, clear day in Ahmedabad, with a ground temperature of 37C at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport and a wind speed of around seven knots.
Air India Boeing 787-8, registration VT-ANB, touched down at 11.17 local time (5.47am GMT) after an internal flight from Delhi.
Sabharwal and his co-pilot, first officer Clive Kunder, 32, arrived at the airport and passed a breathalyser test at 11.55. The 10 flight attendants boarded the aircraft’s 230 passengers, and its take-off weight was measured as 213,401kg against a maximum allowed 218,183kg, so it was not overloaded.
The aircraft, first flown in 2013 and designed to last for 30-50 years, had undergone its annual airworthiness check three weeks earlier, on May 22. It had completed 41,868 flying hours, and both engines had been replaced in the three months before the accident.
Air traffic control data showed that at 1.37pm the aircraft was cleared for take-off. By 1.38.35pm the aircraft had reached take-off speed of 155 knots and it became airborne at 1.38.39pm. There was no significant bird activity in the vicinity.
Three seconds after taking off, the aircraft reached 180 knots, the fastest speed it would attain during the ill-fated flight, and it was at this point that something peculiar happened.
According to the preliminary report, two fuel control switches in the cockpit, situated just under the throttle levers, “transitioned” from the “run” position – meaning they were supplying fuel to the two engines – to “cut-off”, with a one-second time gap between the first and second switch moving.
The report stated that in the cockpit voice recording “one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cut off. The other pilot responded that he did not do so”.
Flight 171: second by second
Flight 171 cleared for take-off
Aircraft reaches take-off speed of 155 knots
Plane becomes airborne
Ram Air Turbine hydraulic pump deployed. Typically, they are automatically deployed to generate electricity in the event of complete power loss
According to the black box, first fuel switch “transitions” from run to cutoff as aircraft reaches 180 knots – the highest speed it would achieve before crashing
Second fuel switch flicks from run to cutoff. Both engines shut down
Ram Air Turbine begins supplying emergency hydraulic power
Engine No1 fuel switch returns to “run”
Engine No2 fuel switch returns to “run”
Pilot’s Mayday call
Aircraft crashes 0.9 miles (1.4km) from end of runway
CCTV footage filmed from the ground showed the aircraft’s Ram Air turbine being deployed. It is an emergency power source that is automatically triggered by the loss of both engines, total loss of hydraulic power, or a massive electrical failure.
The turbine pump began supplying hydraulic power at 1.38.47pm, eight seconds after take-off and around five seconds after the fuel cut-off switches moved. As will become apparent, this is a hugely significant piece of evidence.
With the fuel to the engines cut, the aircraft started to lose altitude before it had even crossed the perimeter wall of the airport.
Ramesh later described how it seemed to be “stuck in the air” as it stopped climbing.
The flight data recorder – later recovered from the wreckage of the aircraft – showed the Engine No 1 fuel cut-off switch moving from “cut-off” back to “run” at 1.38.52pm, meaning the fuel had been cut for 10 seconds before it was restored. Four seconds later, Engine No 2’s cut-off switch returned to the “run” position.
Both engines were automatically reignited, but only one, Engine No 1, managed to “start to progress to recovery”.
At 1.39pm, one of the pilots transmitted “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday”. Air traffic control responded, but six seconds later, at 1.39pm, after clipping several trees and an incineration chimney, the aircraft hit the canteen of a hostel building at the BJ Medical College, 0.9 miles from the end of the runway, where several students were having their lunch.
The tail section and right-hand main landing gear embedded themselves in the wall of the hostel. The front of the aircraft, including the flight deck and the intact windscreen glass, came to rest about 650ft (198m) from the initial point of contact with the hostel. In seat 11A, next to an emergency exit, was Ramesh.
“I managed to unbuckle myself, used my leg to push through that opening, and crawled out,” he later explained. “I saw people dying in front of my eyes – the air hostesses, and two people I saw near me.
“For a moment, I felt like I was going to die too, but when I opened my eyes and looked around, I realised I was alive. I still can’t believe how I survived. I walked out of the rubble.”
Of the 242 people on board, including two infants and 11 other children, only Ramesh escaped death. Not only that, but he was able to walk unaided towards a waiting ambulance.
Another 19 people were killed on the ground, with 68 injured. The passengers who died were 169 Indian nationals, 52 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian. It was the first fatal accident involving a 787, of which there are more than 1100 currently in service worldwide.
Air accident investigators were scrambled to the scene and once the two “black box” flight recorders had been recovered, attention turned to the two men who had been at the controls.
The switching of the fuel control knobs to cut off the supply to the engines, coupled with the verbal exchange between the two pilots, appeared damning.
There seemed to be no question of either man cutting the fuel off accidentally: Sabharwal, who held an airline transport pilot licence, the highest level of certification, had logged 15,638 flying hours, including 8596 on 787s, while Kunder, who held a commercial pilot licence, had 3403 hours, including 1128 on 787s.
In addition, the spring-loaded knobs had to be pulled out before being turned, in order to prevent accidental movements.
Although the preliminary report did not specify which of the two pilots had accused the other of moving the switches, Sabharwal was the monitoring pilot while Kunder was the one actually flying the aircraft, suggesting that Sabharwal would have had his hands free to move the switches, while Kunder would have been looking ahead with his hands on the control column.
On August 30, 10 weeks after the crash, two people from the investigation team turned up unannounced at the home of Sabharwal’s father, Pushkaraj, a retired air traffic controller, in Mumbai.
A family member says: “One of them told him that Sumeet had a suicidal tendency, asserting that the cockpit voice recorder analysis implicated him. It has hurt us all. He told them that his son was a highly qualified and trained pilot, who regularly passed all mandated medical exams. He also told them that he was not under any emotional distress.”
Pushkaraj Sabharwal has filed a petition in India’s Supreme Court claiming that the preliminary report was “profoundly flawed” with “serious infirmities and perversities”. He believes that the report overlooked “glaring and plausible systemic causes” and wants an independent judicial review.
Speaking through his lawyer, Joseph Pookkatt, Pushkaraj Sabharwal told the Telegraph: “The investigation team, rather than conducting a comprehensive technical inquiry, appears predominantly focused on the deceased pilots, who are no longer able to defend themselves. Leaks have fuelled a malicious media campaign, resulting in the character assassination of my son. False narratives of suicidal intent have been propagated, based on personal events with no relevance to his professional conduct.”
Those personal events include the death of his mother in 2022 and separation from his wife. There were also reports, denied by his family, that he suffered from depression.
Amit Singh, an aviation expert and the founder of India’s Safety Matters Foundation think-tank, agrees that the investigation appears to be suffering from confirmation bias.
“It doesn’t make much sense,” he says. “If the pilot wants to commit suicide, why would he want the co-pilot to fly the aircraft? He would fly himself and push the aircraft to the ground, that’s easier.
“Why were they trying to revive the engines and keep the aircraft airborne? Clearly the co-pilot is not [doing that], it is the captain. If he doesn’t want to fly, he will push the aircraft down rather than trying to keep it afloat.”
But if the fuel control switches were not deliberately moved, what alternative explanation could there be?
Intriguingly, problems with the fuel control switches had been reported in the past.
On December 17, 2018, the US’ Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) issued a special bulletin regarding the potential disengagement of the fuel control switches’ locking mechanism.
Pilots of other Boeing aircraft reported the switches being installed with the locking feature disengaged. The throttle control module, which includes the switches, was replaced on VT-ANB in 2023 and no faults had been reported with it, but a possible fault will have to be ruled out by the investigators.
Another possibility is that the switches were never touched by the pilots, and that it was a short-circuit or other fault deep within the aircraft’s electronic “brain” that triggered the fuel shut-off and falsely recorded that the switches had been moved.
Engineers call this “switch mimicking”, meaning that a circuit switches on or off without the physical switch itself moving.
Charanvir Randhawa, the president of the Federation of Indian Pilots union – of which both pilots were members – believes that the fuel control switches, which were in the “run” position when the wreckage was examined, were never touched by the pilots.
He says: “The preliminary report claims that both fuel control switches moved from run to cut-off within one second and reverted shortly thereafter. Such near-synchronised manual actuation is implausible under take-off conditions.
“This strongly suggests an automatic or corrupted digital command, not human intervention. To treat this as a deliberate pilot error, without first excluding electronic malfunction, is procedurally unjust. It reverses causation, blaming the pilots for what could be a symptom of system failure.”
Randhawa argues that other clues point to a malfunction, rather than sabotage. The deployment of the air turbine pump, which automatically pops out of the fuselage when both primary and back-up electrical or hydraulic systems fail, is further evidence of an electrical or digital malfunction, he says.
The preliminary report states that it began supplying hydraulic power at 1.38.47pm, eight seconds after take-off and around five seconds after the fuel cut-off switches moved, but it does not give a precise time for when the pump was deployed, other than “immediately after lift-off”.
Singh believes that the deployment of the pump proves there was already a major problem before the flight recorder logged the fuel being cut off.
According to one expert, the pump takes six seconds to spool up, meaning it deployed at 1.38.41pm, which would suggest that the fault that made it deploy happened at around 1.38.40pm, one second after take-off and two seconds before the fuel cut-off was registered.
Mike Andrews, an American lawyer who is representing 140 victim families, says: “My focus has always been on what caused the Ram Air Turbine to deploy. If we understand that, we will be a lot closer to understanding what happened.”
Others believe that the state of the flight recorders themselves – rather than the information stored on them – provides yet more evidence of faults on board.
Boeing 787s are fitted with two flight recorders, one at the front and one at the back of the aircraft, both of which record flight data and cockpit voices. While the soot-blackened forward device, which has its own back-up power supply, was recovered intact, the aft recorder, which is powered only by the main electrical system, was so badly damaged that its data was irrecoverable.
Both devices are built to withstand temperatures of 1100C for at least 60 minutes – the sort of temperatures reached in a fuel fire – but the casing of the aft recorder had completely melted.
Singh says: “That kind of temperature comes only from a lithium-ion battery fire, which reaches 1500 to 2000C.”
In other words, Singh says, the fuel fire did not cause the damage to the black box. “I think the fire was there before, during take-off or sometime before, and this was already melted,” he says. “It is not a post-impact fire.”
Because the aft flight recorder was destroyed, investigators cannot retrieve the one piece of information that it alone contained – the moment it stopped working, which might have provided a vital clue about a fire or electrical failure in the moments before the crash.
Add to this the fact that the aircraft’s emergency locator transmitter, a sort of homing signal that helps rescuers locate downed aircraft, did not send any signal after the crash, and a strong picture of a major electrical malfunction builds.
Pierson says the question over the fuel control switches is a “red herring”, because “we’ve got to look at the whole picture”, including the 787’s controversial common core system (CCS). The 787 is a “monster of complexity”, in his words.
The CCS is a centralised brain that combines many of the aircraft’s functions in one place.
Older aircraft have dedicated electronics for each function spread throughout the aircraft, making it less likely that all of them will be knocked out at the same time.
The CCS handles thrust management, flight management and the remote power distribution system, among other things. Safety experts have warned that this approach means that a single problem, known in aviation as a “single point of failure”, could cause a domino effect of multiple malfunctions, a theoretical danger that has been acknowledged by the FAA.
Pierson says: “We have analysed over 2000 aircraft systems failure reports from 787 safety reports, and we found that there are a lot of chronic issues involving the electrical and electronic systems. A lot.”
General Mary Schiavo, a former US Department of Transportation inspector-general, had previously warned of the potential for the automated systems accidentally to reduce engine thrust.
In particular, she identified the thrust control malfunction accommodation (TCMA) – which monitors engine power and shuts them down if it senses a major problem – and full authority digital engine control (Fadec), which manages fuel flow, as systems that could cause loss of thrust in a malfunction. A TCMA problem was blamed for an uncommanded dual engine shutdown in 2019 as a 787-8 landed in Japan.
Schiavo believes that something similar could have happened to Flight 171, arguing that this is a far more likely scenario than pilot error or suicide.
The pilots’ families have pointed out that the preliminary report contained no evidence that the investigators had raised this issue with Boeing, engine manufacturer General Electric or avionics supplier Honeywell. They are demanding that the investigators carry out tests to check whether an electrical or software failure could have caused the loss of thrust.
Perhaps oddly, both thrust levers – the throttles, in layman’s terms – were near the “idle” position when found in the wreckage, even though the black box showed that they had been in the take-off thrust position until the impact. Could this also indicate false data?
If a problem with the CCS did cause the crash, what caused the problem with the CCS in the first place?
Andrews believes there is strong evidence to suggest that a leak in the aircraft’s drinking water pipes could be to blame, while Pierson believes that it could be the result of a wide variety of potential electrical hazards.
On May 14, 2025, the FAA issued an airworthiness directive for all Boeing 787-8s “prompted by reports of water leakage from the potable water system due to improperly installed waterline couplings, and water leaking into the electronics equipment (EE) bays from above the floor in the main cabin, resulting in water on the equipment in the EE bays”.
The FAA mandated inspections of 787s for “missing, damaged or deteriorated sealant” including moisture barrier tape above the EE bays, warning of “unsafe condition on these products”.
The FAA asserted that Boeing was to blame for the fault, saying: “The root cause was due to the floor panel design missing sealant and moisture barrier tape at certain floor panels and seat tracks, because of the inadvertent omission of sealing instructions from Boeing floor panel drawings.”
According to the FAA, the problem arose in 2018, meaning that only aircraft manufactured after that date were affected. But the Foundation for Aviation Safety contested this, saying the problem had been identified as long ago as 2016, meaning that older aircraft – including VT-ANB – were potentially affected.
On February 10, 2025, four months before the Air India Flight 171 crash, the Foundation for Aviation Safety complained to the FAA about the delays in repairing 787 water ingress defects and the corrective action that was being taken to fix the root cause.
Andrews, who has been contacted by several whistleblowers who are concerned about safety standards at Boeing, says that water intrusion could affect the TCMA and Fadec systems that Schiavo was so worried about, which would explain the flickering lights and the Ram Air Turbine deployment.
If he is right, it would raise the possibility that Flight 171 crashed because sealant costing US$350 had been omitted or incorrectly applied 12 years earlier.
Until the final report comes out, theories about water leakage or short circuits are just that: theories. But there is a wealth of evidence that VT-ANB was ailing even before it reached the runway.
According to the preliminary report, four problems with so-called “minimum equipment list” items on the aircraft had been identified.
These are non-critical items that an aircraft can temporarily fly without, provided they are fixed within a certain timeframe. These four “category C” faults were reported on June 9, 2025, three days before the crash, meaning that they had to be fixed by June 19.
The four faults related to flight-deck door visual surveillance, airport map function, flight-deck printer and core network.
Air passengers may not be aware that while your car will fail its WOF if any warning lights on the dashboard are on (and it can’t be driven until they are fixed), civilian aircraft are allowed to fly with multiple faults, so long as there is a schedule to fix them, because the aircraft are so complicated that faults crop up all the time.
Whether a particular fault is “minor” or non-critical for flight is open for debate: one of the questions being posed by the families of the dead is why a core network malfunction was classed as a category C fault rather than one that required immediate repair.
The day before the crash, there had been a problem with the nitrogen generation system in the tail of the aircraft, a system that displaces fuel vapour in empty tanks with inert nitrogen, decreasing the risk of fire.
Then, on the day of the crash, the crew that flew the aircraft from Delhi to Ahmedabad made a pilot defect report stating “STAB POS XDCR” in the aircraft’s technical log, meaning there was a potential fault with the stabiliser position transducer, a sensor that measures the position of the horizontal stabiliser (the part of the tailplane that is used to move the nose up or down in flight). Engineers checked the part and the aircraft was released for flight just under an hour later.
Just 15 minutes before take-off, the aircraft’s bus power control units (BPCUs), which manage the electrical systems, sent real-time signals to Boeing and Air India indicating malfunctions with both BPCUs.
In isolation, none of these problems is classed as major issues, but taken together, according to some experts they show a pattern of electrical problems that point to issues with the core network.
According to reports in India, in the minute before the aircraft took off, and almost certainly as it was heading down the runway, the 787’s aircraft communications addressing and reporting system sent a fault code to Boeing and Air India which indicated that the Fadec was receiving corrupted data from an engine monitoring probe.
Pierson says: “That aircraft was sending out fault messages before it took off. That is a big red flag. The aircraft health management system was also sending real-time data to Air India and Boeing so they had that information before the fires were even put out. None of that information was included in the preliminary report.
“Any system that has a fault on that plane should not be discounted by anyone. I would say, prove to me that that is not a big deal. We have found over the years that very small, minor things can be a triggering point for something major.”
Nor were these faults on the aircraft uncharacteristic. Pierson says: “This particular aircraft, from the time it was built until the day it crashed, had a long history of serious system failures. There is ample compelling evidence to show that this aeroplane was experiencing electrical and electronic problems for years.”
Although official records state that it was built in 2013, VT-ANB actually rolled out of Boeing’s factory in Everett, Washington state, in November 2010, but its maiden flight was not until December 2013. It was finally delivered to Air India on January 31, 2014, more than three years after it was assembled. The aircraft was supposed to be the second 787 to be delivered to Air India, but the hold-up meant that it was the 12th. The pilot who flew the aircraft from the factory to Delhi referred only to “certain pre-delivery observations” when he was asked about the lengthy delay by an Indian newspaper last year.
Pierson says there has been “a clear deterioration of standards in the aviation industry in the last 15 or so years”. During the time he worked for Boeing, for example, aircraft would be continually inspected during the in-house build process, but Boeing now outsources much of the 787’s production. As a result, some airlines have taken to ordering independent inspections of new aircraft before they accept delivery.
Boeing quality engineer Sam Salehpour told a US Senate committee in 2024 that Boeing “took shortcuts” to speed up production of 787s, including jumping on misaligned panels to make them fit, which, he said, could significantly shorten the lifespan of the aircraft and “limit the ability of airlines to predict when aeroplanes need to be taken out of service to avoid a failure during flight”.
Boeing said at the time that it was “fully confident” in the safety of 787s, and that: “Under FAA oversight, we have painstakingly inspected and reworked aeroplanes and improved production quality to meet exacting standards that are measured in the one hundredths of an inch.”
However, it added: “We know we have more work to do and we are taking action across our company.”
Across the board in the airline industry, Pierson believes: “We have seen a stunning amount of defects. They still call aviation safety the gold standard, but when you look under the rock and see what’s underneath, you just want to put that rock back over it.”
It should be stressed that air travel remains by far the safest form of transport. Statistically, travelling by car is hundreds of times more dangerous than flying on commercial aircraft when it comes to fatalities per million miles travelled, and the world’s 787s have clocked up around three billion miles since the Air India disaster without any other crashes or fatalities. The purpose of air accident investigations, though, is to ensure that even the most unlikely sequence of events leading to a disaster cannot be repeated.
The Telegraph put the questions raised in this article about 787 safety to Boeing, whose spokesman replied: “We will defer to India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau to provide any information with regards to Air India flight 171, consistent with the UN International Civil Aviation Organisation protocol known as Annex 13.”
Air India was also approached for comment.
If the investigators’ final report concludes that the aircraft, rather than the pilots, caused the crash, it would not be the first time that flight crew have been blamed for deadly incidents that turned out to be Boeing’s fault.
In 2019, the pilots of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max were blamed by some US politicians for a crash six minutes after the aircraft had taken off from Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people on board. In fact, the aircraft had effectively flown itself into the ground by forcing its nose down as a result of a single faulty sensor on the wing.
An identical problem with an Indonesian Lion Air 737 Max the previous year had caused that aircraft to crash into the sea 13 minutes after take-off, killing all 189 passengers and crew. It was these crashes that led to the grounding of the 737 Max fleet and the collapse in Boeing’s share price.
Nevertheless, the blame game over Flight 171 goes on. In October, Air India’s chief executive, New Zealander Campbell Wilson, made clear which side he was on, saying the preliminary report had “indicated that there was nothing wrong with the aircraft, the engines or the operation of the airline”.
Justice Surya Kant, the Supreme Court of India judge considering the application for a judicial inquiry into the tragedy, told Sabharwal’s father: “You should not carry this burden that your son is being blamed. Nobody can blame him for anything.”
Air India has offered £21,500 interim payments to victims’ families, and it seems likely that that figure will be dwarfed by eventual compensation payouts, which are likely to top £1m for each family based on past precedent. But money will not bring anyone’s loved ones back.
Imtiyaz Ali Syed, 42, whose brother Javed died in the crash with his wife, Mariam, and their two children, said he wanted a fair investigation, not to be “silenced by monetary compensation”.
“My mother has fallen into depression,” he says. “She has lost her younger son, her daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. For a mother it feels like the end of the world. Our top demand is a proper investigation, not money. No amount of compensation can heal this pain.”
In India, the publication of the preliminary report was greeted with anger and distrust, as there was scepticism about its strong steer towards pilot sabotage.
There is also talk of India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau coming under pressure from the US to exonerate Boeing, with rumours of the preliminary report being cut down from 40 pages to just 15 as a result. The crash has largely dropped off the agenda in India in recent months.
Sabharwal’s father says: “The Supreme Court has said the whole country is with our son. We see hope in the court. All we have ever asked for is a truthful investigation.
“Justice, for us, means a fair and transparent investigation. We are fighting to protect Sumeet’s reputation.”
In Leicester, Ramesh has built a wall of silence around himself as he battles post-traumatic stress.
“I just sit on my bed all day. I just think about my brother,” he said in November when he agreed to be interviewed by a handful of broadcast and print journalists, but said almost nothing about the events of June 12.
Radd Seiger, a retired lawyer who is acting as an adviser to the family, said Ramesh, who is married with a 4-year-old son, remains a recluse. He still suffers from the physical injuries he sustained in the crash, and is in pain when he walks, but his mental scars are clearly far worse.
Sanjiv Patel, a community leader in Leicester, said the family still haven’t been able to have a conversation with him about what happened in Ahmedabad. “Anything to do with that day, he kind of blocks it out,” he said.
The ongoing uncertainty over the cause of the crash raises the inevitable question of whether 787s are safe, and whether passengers should be worried about flying in them.
“This air accident investigation should be of interest to everyone that flies,” says Pierson. “The information that has been put out so far was misleading and incomplete. There was nothing that even suggested they were looking at a potential systems failure.
“Based on what I now know, I have been telling people not to fly in a 787 until all the systems issues with this aircraft are properly investigated and resolved.”
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