Seven months after plane crash, officials of two aviation cos booked

MUMBAI: Nearly seven months after the Ghatkopar plane crash that claimed five lives, advocate Prabhatkumar Kathuria, husband of co-captain Marya Zuberi who died in the incident, lodged an FIR against the officer-bearers of UY Aviation Pvt Ltd, who owned the aircraft, and Indamer Aviation Pvt Ltd, who was repairing it.
The Ghatkopar police booked UY Aviation director Deepak Kothari and manager Anil Chauhan, and Indamer Aviation CEO Rajeev Gupta and Avinash Bharti, who holds a mangerial post, for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and act endangering life or personal safety of others. “We have registered the FIR,” confirmed zonal DCP Akhilesh Singh. No arrest has been made yet.

On June 28, 2018, a twin-engine King Air C 90 aircraft crashed into the compound of an under-construction building, killing Captain Pradip Rajput, first officer Zuberi, engineer Surabhi Gupta, junior technician Manish Pandey on board and a pedestrian. The flight out of Juhu airport was carried out as a part of the process for obtaining a vaild certificate of airworthiness for the 26-year-old aircraft that had severe damage in a crash in Allahabad a decade ago, when it was owned by the UP government. The families of the pilots had questioned the decision for a test flight when it was raining and visibility was poor.

In his letter to the police, Kathuria said that on the day of the incident, his wife while leaving home told him she believed the weather conditions were not fit for flying and the test flight could be cancelled. “But the test flight was neither cancelled by DGCA officals nor called off by UY Aviation or Indamer Aviation. My wife, in her short service with UY Aviation, told me that on many occasions Chauhan and other personnel would pressure engineers and pilots to hasten flight processes and disregard prescribed test procedure, the letter said.”