Authorities have begun handing over the remains of victims of one of India’s worst aviation disasters, with Air India crashing and killing at least 270 people, officials said Sunday.
A few minutes after Thursday’s departure, London’s Boeing 787 raided a medical school hotel in a residential area in the northwestern city of Ahmedabad, killing 241 people and at least 29 people on the ground. One passenger survived.
Hundreds of relatives of the crash victims provided DNA samples at the hospital. Most corpses are burnt or dismembered, making them unrecognizable.
Rajneesh Patel, an official at the Civil Hospital of Ahmedabad, said so far, authorities have identified 32 victims through DNA mapping and their families have been informed. He said the bodies of 14 victims were handed over to relatives.
The victim’s family waited in the morgue in the hospital as authorities worked to complete the formalities and transfer the body of the coffin to an ambulance. Most of them express frustration at the slow pace of the identification process. Authorities say it usually takes up to 72 hours to complete the DNA matching and the process is being accelerated.
Among the passengers were 169 Indians, 53 British, 7 Portuguese and one Canadian.
Qasim Rashid Ahmed, a British national of Indians, whose charity provides food and accommodation for relatives of the victims, said most British victims have relatives in Gujarat and provide their DNA samples.
In addition to the formal investigation, the Indian government has also established a high-level committee to examine the causes of the crash. The Indian Civil Aviation Ministry said in a statement on Saturday that the committee will focus on developing procedures to prevent and deal with aircraft emergencies.
Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu said in New Delhi on Saturday that authorities also began to inspect the entire fleet of Air India’s 787 Dream Parallel.
Jinjarapu said eight of India’s 34 fantasy paralleles had already been inspected, adding that the remaining aircraft will be inspected with “immediate urgency.”
Investigators on Friday retrieved the aircraft’s digital flight data recorder or black box from a roof near the crash site.
According to the airline, an Air India plane headed to London and crashed five minutes after taking off in the northwestern Indian city of Ahmedabad on Thursday. They said there were 53 British citizens, seven in Portugal and one Canadian citizen were among the 242 passengers and crew members on the flight. Warning: This video contains graphic footage.
Paul Fromme, a mechanical engineer based in the UK-based Mechanical Engineers Agency, said the device is expected to reveal information about the engine and control settings, while the voice recorder will provide cockpit conversation.
The crashed plane is 12 years old. According to experts, about 1,200 of the 787 Dreamliner aircraft worldwide have been operating in the first fatal crash in 16 years.
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