Ahmedabad crash LIVE: Govt-constituted panel meets; wait for families continues

A high-level multi-disciplinary committee, set up by the government to look into the Ahmedabad plane crash, on Monday (June 16, 2025) deliberated on various possible theories that could have led to the country's worst air disaster in decades.

The panel, chaired by Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan, listened to the opinions of various stakeholders about the possible causes of the aircrash and deliberated on steps to be taken to check future occurrences of any such accident, sources said.

In the first meeting of the panel here, the sources said, the focus of the participants was to analyse the possible causes of the aircrash and how to go about in "formulating Standard Operating Procedures for preventing such occurrences in the future".

The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner with 242 persons on board crashed into a medical college complex in Ahmedabad moments after taking off from the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport at 1.39 pm on June 12.

While 241 persons on board the London-bound aircraft died, one passenger miraculously survived. Besides, 29 persons, including five MBBS students, are reported to have died in the disaster on the ground.

Agonising wait for families

Amid the trauma of losing their loved ones, it is a long wait for the families of several victims of the Air India plane crash as they continue to camp here for four days in the hope of getting the mortal remains of their kin.

They were among the first ones to submit their samples for DNA tests on June 12, the day the horrific incident occurred, so that they could be matched with the deceased. They were asked to wait for 72 hours, but the deadline got over on Sunday and the wait seems endless.

Till Monday afternoon, the Ahmedabad civil hospital authorities said 99 victims have been identified through DNA testing and 64 bodies handed over to the victims.

Health authorities here have asked the distraught family members not to panic, while experts said the DNA samples matching could take time, given the large number of fatalities in the crash.

What kin say

"We visited the DNA collection centre yesterday but were told that our samples were yet to be matched," Pooja Sukhadare, a relative of crew member Roshni Songhare, said.

Sukhadare has been here since the tragedy with the father and brother of Songhare, whose family resides at Dombivli in Maharashtra's Thane district.

Addressing concerns of the grief-stricken families, civil superintendent Dr Rakesh Joshi appealed to them not to panic over the time consuming process of matching the DNA samples of relatives with the remains of the deceased.

What experts say

Attempts to contact Forensic Science Laboratory Director H P Sanghvi did not yield any success.

Rakesh Mishra, former director of the Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, told PTI that DNA matching is not a tedious task but in the case of this accident the number of deceased is large.

Also, it depends on the condition of the tissue. If the body is very charred, they have to look for a bone, extract tissue which is intact or in a better condition.

"More damaged and degraded samples will fetch less data. In this case, some may have been severely damaged, burnt and those will be challenging, but it is doable. Plus, there will be samples of relatives whose DNA has to be isolated," said Mishra, who is now director of the Tata Institute of Genetics and Society in Bengaluru.

He said that in an accident of this magnitude, it can take time due to the condition of the bodies.

Since people sit very closely next to each other in the economy class of an aircraft, in such cases there is a possibility that tissues melt and get mixed up due to extreme heat. In some cases bodies pile up over each other during the rescue work, he said.

Follow The Federal’s stories on the crash here