Fathers of 2 Ghatkopar Plane Crash Victims File Police Complaint

A chartered plane had crashed in Ghatkopar on 28 June 2018, killing four people on board and a pedestrian.

A chartered plane crashed in Ghatkopar on 28 June 2018, killing four people on board and a pedestrian.

(Photo: AP)

Family members of junior technician Manish Pandey and engineer Surbhi Gupta, who had died in a plane crash in Mumbai’s Ghatkopar last year, filed complaints to the Mumbai Police on Thursday, 3 January.

The two victims’ fathers alleged that the deceased were “induced to board the aircraft under deceitful means” by the employer, The Indian Express reported.

Mumbai-based UY Aviation’s Beech King Air C-90 aircraft VT-UPZ had crashed into an under-construction building in Ghatkopar West in June last year, killing five people. Investigators had found that the aircraft did not have the air worthiness certificate for a test flight issued by the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

The latest complaint comes three days after Pandey’s widow Sunita Chaturvedi raised a similar issue at the Santacruz police station. She demanded that an FIR for abduction and murder be lodged against the top three officials of Indamer Aviation, which was carrying out repairs on the plane, and UY Aviation, reported Mumbai Mirror.

In December 2018, a report by the Parliamentary Committee on Labour had stated that the crew was “induced to board the aircraft under deceitful means” as opposed to following DGCA norms for test flights. Pandey and Gupta’s family members based their allegations on this report, according to The Indian Express.

Dismissing allegations, Indamer Aviation Managing Director Rajeev Gupta told IE that while Surbhi Gupta was the head of the team that carried out maintenance work on the aircraft, Manish Pandey was a member of the team.

The complainants also alleged that the plane had crashed due to several factors like “adverse weather, wrong crew combination for test flight, aircraft being flown after 10 years, aircraft being serviced unprofessionally, and the operator having secured his financial interest by getting the aircraft insured for Rs 7 crore,” reported The Indian Express.

Senior Inspector of Santacruz Police, Shriram Koregoankar, said that a preliminary inquiry was underway.

(With inputs from The Indian Express and the Mumbai Mirror)