SEVEN MONTHS after the deadly plane crash in Ghatkopar, officials of two aviation firms were booked by police on Wednesday on charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The husband of the first officer, who was among the five killed in the accident, has accused both firms of pressuring the crew into readying the aircraft for a test flight despite knowing fully well that it wasn’t ready.
Prabhat Kathuria, a Mira Road-based lawyer, whose wife Marya Zuberi was the first officer on board the Beechcraft King Air C-90 aircraft, VT-UPZ, approached Ghatkopar police station on Wednesday with his complaint.
The plane crashed into an underconstruction building in Ghatkopar West at 1.10 pm on June 28, 2018, after it took off for a test flight from Juhu aerodrome. Captain Pradip Rajput, engineer Surbhi Gupta, junior technician Manish Pandey and a pedestrian were also killed in the crash. Two others were injured.
Zuberi was employed with U Y Aviation, which owned the aircraft and had given a contract to Indamer Aviation to repair the plane. U Y Aviation had itself purchased the aircraft from another firm, Silver Jubilee, which had picked it up as scrap at an auction held by the Uttar Pradesh government in 2014.
Those booked are Deepak Kothari, the director of U Y Aviation; Anil Chauhan, the firm’s accountable manager and chief of flight safety Vinod Sai, Indamer Aviation CEO Rajiv Gupta and Avinash Bharti, who oversees its daily operations and Ajay Agarwal, who supplied spare parts to Indamer Aviation, which Kathuria alleged were substandard.
In the FIR, Kathuria stated that his wife had mentioned being under pressure to ready the aged aircraft for a test flight. He also raised suspicions that Indamer Aviation did not have the requisite machinery to carry out the extensive repairs needed and that U Y Aviation did not get clearance for the test flight from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), which it had been trying to procure since 2015.
He also alleged in the FIR that a test flight scheduled for June 27 was cancelled due to inclement weather. The next day, even though Zuberi had been asked to report to the aerodrome for another attempt, Kathuria added that she told him that she expected to be back home early as the continuing bad weather was sure to result in the test flight being called off again. He also claimed that a DGCA deputy director was present at the aerodrome during the test flight on the fateful day. After the crash, Kathuria accused both firms for having directed their employees to delete WhatsApp chats and images and other digital material related to work on the aircraft. In the FIR, Kathuria also questioned U Y Aviation having insured the aircraft for Rs 32 crore when it had paid Rs 2 crore to purchase it.
Kathuria has accused both firms of coercing the crew members into undertaking the test flight despite being aware of the risks involved.
Like the fathers of Gupta and Pandey in their previous complaints, Kathuria had urged police to file charges of kidnapping, murder and forgery. But the Ghatkopar police invoked charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, causing hurt by an act endangering the life or personal safety of others and common intention under the IPC.
While police have also booked people responsible for allowing the test flight without permission, no official from the DGCA has been named.
