MUMBAI: The bodies of a dozen victims of last month’s Air India Express crash near the city of Mangalore may have been given to the wrong families for burial or cremation, the airline said on Thursday.
A total of 158 of the 166 passengers and crew on board were killed when the Boeing 737-800 jet from Dubai crashed and burst into flames after landing in southwest India on May 22.
Some 80 DNA samples were taken from family members to help establish the identities of 22 victims badly burned by fire. Ten positive matches were found.
“At the end of the identification process, there were 12 bodies which remained in Mangalore and which remained unidentified,” said Air India spokesman K. Swaminathan.
“We took samples, however they didn’t match with the DNA of relatives... Somebody who had claimed the bodies earlier might have claimed it wrongly,” he added. All the bodies had been taken from the crash site to mortuaries at local hospitals before being released for burial or cremation.
A source familiar with the matter suggested that the mix-up may have occurred after some relatives wrongly identified their loved ones from distinguishing marks, jewellery or personal effects.
The 12 unclaimed bodies were buried in Mangalore on Wednesday, Swaminathan said.
One of the bodies said to have been given to another family was that of flight attendant Sujata Survase, the Mumbai Mirror newspaper reported. Her father, Siddarth, told the daily tabloid: “I was informed by the Air India authorities that by mistake somebody else has taken away my daughter’s body and cremated it. How can I come to terms with this tragedy when I didn’t even perform her last rites?”
Published in the Express Tribune, June 4th, 2010.
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