Families’ agonising wait nears end


Untold grief: A family member mourning near the coffin of Chetnaba Chavda, who died along with her husband Ranvirsinh Chavda, in the Air India plane crash, in Ahmedabad. — Reuters

More than 200 victims of last week’s Air India jet crash have been identified through DNA testing, a hospital official said, inching towards ending an agonising wait for relatives.

There was one survivor out of 242 passengers and crew on board the London-bound plane last Thursday when it slammed into a residential area of Ahmedabad, killing at least 38 people on the ground.

Distraught relatives have been providing DNA samples to help identify their loved ones, in a painstakingly slow process.

As of Wednesday, 208 victims had been identified, the civil hospital’s medical superintendent Rakesh Joshi told journalists.

The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crashed moments after takeoff, with witnesses reporting seeing badly burnt bodies and scattered remains.

Indian authorities are yet to announce the cause of the crash and investigators from Britain and the United States have joined the probe.

Investigators are aiming to retrieve vital information from both black boxes recovered from the site – the cockpit voice recor­der and the flight data recorder.

India’s Aircraft Accident Inves­tigation Bureau upgraded a laboratory this year where black boxes can be analysed.

Following the crash, the civil aviation regulator ordered inspections of Air India’s Dreamliners.

Air India said on Wednesday it would also carry out “enhanced safety checks on its Boeing 777 fleet”, in a note announcing a decision to cut its international flights on wide-body planes by 15% until mid-July. — AFP

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