Latest news with #FionaWilcox
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Yahoo
Some Families of Air India Victims Sent Wrong Remains, Lawyer Claims: ‘Double Psychological Trauma'
The families of some Air India victims from the United Kingdom were given the wrong remains, according to a lawyer. Officials have said 241 of the 242 people onboard the London-bound flight died when the plane crashed shortly after taking off in Ahmedabad, India, on June 12. But James Healy-Pratt, an aviation lawyer who said he is representing multiple U.K. families in the wake of the crash, told CBS News and The Daily Mail that the remains of two British victims had been misidentified. Healy-Pratt said the mistakes were uncovered when Inner West London coroner Dr. Fiona Wilcox attempted to match DNA samples from the victims and their families, the outlets reported. One of the caskets contained remains that had "nothing to do with them,' and another had 'commingled' DNA that 'wasn't related to the person in the casket or the other person,' the lawyer told CBS News. At least one family was forced to cancel funeral plans after learning the remains they were given did not belong to their loved one, Healy-Pratt said. The lawyer told The Daily Mail that the families impacted by the mix-up 'deserve an explanation.' Speaking with CBS News, he described it as 'a double psychological trauma.' 'It's one thing to lose a loved one,' he said, 'but then you go to India, you sit in a hotel, you give your DNA, you pray to God that there'll be a DNA match. You're then told there is. You're assured everything's fine and certified. You come back, and then you're told either there's more remains in the casket than just your loved one, or there are no remains, in spite of having been certified, and we don't know who this is.' In a statement shared Wednesday, July 23, Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Shri Randhir Jaiswal said authorities 'have seen the report' about the mix-up and "have been working closely with the UK side from the moment these concerns and issues were brought to our attention.' "In the wake of the tragic crash, the concerned authorities had carried out identification of victims as per established protocols and technical requirements,' Jaiswal said. 'All mortal remains were handled with utmost professionalism and with due regard for the dignity of the deceased. We are continuing to work with the UK authorities on addressing any concerns related to this issue." But Healy-Pratt told CBS News that statement 'lacked specifics' and was "simply not good enough." "The families want to draw a line under their emotional distress that's come out from this and so that requires detailed hard work by the Indian authorities to provide assurances that there are no further remains of British nationals either unidentified, identified or mislabeled, misidentified in India,' the lawyer explained. 'And the line will not be drawn until that cast iron assurance is provided. And at the moment, it's not forthcoming," he added. PEOPLE reached out to Air India for comment on Wednesday, July 23. Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. The airline previously said 53 British nationals were on the Boeing 787-8 aircraft when it crashed in June. There were also 169 Indian nationals, 7 Portuguese nationals and 1 Canadian national on board. Read the original article on People
Arab Times
23-07-2025
- Arab Times
India Sent Wrong Bodies of Air India Crash Victims to UK
LONDON, July 23: Heartbroken British families say they were handed the wrong bodies of loved ones killed in last month's tragic Air India crash in Gujarat—sparking a growing international scandal that's rocked both London and New Delhi. The Indian government is facing mounting pressure after reports emerged in The Daily Mail, The Times, and The Telegraph, revealing multiple cases of misidentified remains repatriated to the UK. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has not denied the allegations, though it maintains all procedures were carried out with 'utmost professionalism.' Aboard the doomed Air India flight to London Gatwick, which crashed on June 12, were 242 passengers—52 of the 241 killed were British nationals. Twelve of their bodies have since been flown back to the UK, but shockingly, several were wrongly identified, leading to families discovering they had buried strangers. One family even cancelled a funeral at the last moment after learning the coffin contained the body of an unidentified passenger, according to the Daily Mail. In a more disturbing case, the remains of multiple victims were reportedly mixed together in a single coffin, forcing authorities to separate the commingled remains before the burial could proceed. The horrific error was uncovered by Dr Fiona Wilcox, the coroner for Inner West London, who had to verify the victims' identities using DNA samples from surviving relatives. So far, two confirmed cases of mistaken identity have come to light, but there are fears many more families may be grieving the wrong loved one. 'There's deep emotional trauma here,' said James Healy-Pratt, the lawyer representing multiple families. 'One family has been in limbo for two weeks, asking, 'If that's not our relative… then who is it?'' Healy-Pratt has launched a formal inquiry and is demanding answers from Air India and Kenyon International Emergency Services, the airline's crisis response contractor. Families are also turning to their MPs and the UK Foreign Office for support. Some families say they were not even permitted to see the remains before burial. 'They just gave us a tag with a number and told us, 'This is your mother or father,'' said Altaf Taju, a British citizen who lost his parents and brother-in-law in the crash. Although Taju's family members were buried in India, and he was not affected by the mix-up, he expressed serious concern about the identification process. The crash site presented immense challenges: the jet exploded into a residential building, subjecting victims' bodies to temperatures exceeding 1,500°C, making forensic identification especially difficult. In its official response, the MEA's spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said India had been working closely with UK authorities since the issue was first flagged. 'Identification was carried out as per established protocols,' he said. 'All mortal remains were handled with utmost professionalism and with due regard for the dignity of the deceased.' Still, the outrage is far from over. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to raise the matter directly with Indian PM Narendra Modi during his state visit to the UK this week. With the story rapidly gaining traction, both governments now face intense scrutiny over how such a catastrophic error was allowed to occur—and what's being done to ensure it never happens again.
CBS News
23-07-2025
- General
- CBS News
Some Air India plane crash victims' families in U.K. were sent the wrong remains, lawyer says
London — The families of some British victims of the Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad have discovered that remains repatriated to the U.K. were wrongly identified as being their loved ones, a lawyer who says his firm is representing over 20 victims' families told CBS News. Of the 242 people on board the Air India flight from Ahmedabad to London's Gatwick airport that crashed on June 12 just minutes after takeoff, 52 were British citizens. The cause of the crash has not been confirmed, but a preliminary report released earlier this month by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau found that the cockpit cutoff switches for fuel supply to both of the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner's engines were switched, one after another, within one second, leading to both engines losing thrust. James Healy-Pratt, an aviation lawyer representing a number of U.K. families, said the remains of at least 12 British victims of the crash had been repatriated to the U.K., but that two of them had been misidentified. "There was one family who believed they had accompanied their loved one back from India, having gone out there to give DNA for the identification, and then (when they returned to the U.K.) were informed that the remains in the casket were nothing to do with them," Healy-Pratt told CBS News. Healy-Pratt said the mistakes were discovered when the Inner West London coroner, Dr. Fiona Wilcox, sought to verify the victims' identities by matching their DNA to samples provided by the families. "The first two caskets that arrived into the country — Dr. Wilcox and her team, assiduous as always, decided to check the verification and identity, and they discovered that DNA had been commingled in one of the caskets, which wasn't related to the person in the casket or the other person," Healy-Pratt said. Healy-Pratt said the family of one of the victims had to cancel funeral plans after being told the remains they thought belonged to their loved one were actually those of an unknown individual. "It's a double psychological trauma. It's one thing to lose a loved one, but then you go to India, you sit in a hotel, you give your DNA, you pray to God that there'll be a DNA match. You're then told there is. You're assured everything's fine and certified. You come back, and then you're told either there's more remains in the casket than just your loved one, or there are no remains, in spite of having been certified, and we don't know who this is," Healy-Pratt told CBS News. Indian officials cited by local media soon after the crash said that, given the level of the destruction at the site and the extent to which the wreckage was burned, DNA testing would be required to confirm the final death toll from both the plane and from the buildings at the site in Ahmedabad. "We have seen the report and have been working closely with the U.K. side from the moment these concerns and issues were brought to our attention," Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Shri Randhir Jaiswal said in a statement Wednesday. "In the wake of the tragic crash, the concerned authorities had carried out identification of victims as per established protocols and technical requirements. All mortal remains were handled with utmost professionalism and with due regard for the dignity of the deceased. We are continuing to work with the U.K. authorities on addressing any concerns related to this issue." Healy-Pratt said the statement from the Indian Foreign Ministry statement was "simply not good enough." "It lacks specifics. It lacks any detailed explanation of the chain of custody of the remains from the time of identification to DNA matching to placing in caskets. It lacks any assurances that there may be remains, whether mislabeled, unidentified or identified, still in India," he said. "The families want to draw a line under their emotional distress that's come out from this and so that requires detailed hard work by the Indian authorities to provide assurances that there are no further remains of British nationals either unidentified, identified or mislabeled, misidentified in India. And the line will not be drawn until that cast iron assurance is provided. And at the moment, it's not forthcoming," he said. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are set to meet in London this week, and Healy-Pratt said he hoped this issue would make it onto their agenda. Healy-Pratt also said that, in addition to seeking the remains of their loved ones, the British families want to know the cause of the Air India crash, so their lawyers are independently investigating. The families, Healy-Pratt said, want to make sure any safety recommendations that come from formal probes are implemented internationally. "And then finally, they want financial justice," Healy-Pratt said. He said the families legal team had "already made an approach to the lawyers for Air India in London, and we're progressing claims there in the High Court. And we'll also be filing an action against Boeing in the U.S. courts to get more information about these fuel control cutoff switches, because they do have a checkered history."Arshad R. Zargar contributed to this report.
Telegraph
23-07-2025
- Telegraph
Families of British Air India crash victims were ‘sent wrong bodies'
Families of British victims in the Air India plane crash have been given the wrong bodies, it has been claimed. In one case, a funeral was abandoned after it emerged the coffin contained the wrong body, according to the MailOnline. In another, the remains of two victims were said to have been 'commingled' in the same coffin and had to be separated before the burial. Some 52 of the 261 people who died in the disaster in June were British citizens. The errors were reportedly identified by Dr Fiona Wilcox, the Inner West London coroner. James Healy-Pratt, a lawyer representing several British families bereaved by the crash, said the mistakes had left relatives 'distraught'. 'I've been sitting down in the homes of these lovely British families over the last month, and the first thing they want is their loved ones back,' Mr Healy-Pratt told the newspaper. 'But some of them have got the wrong remains and they are clearly distraught over this. It has been going on for a couple of weeks [and] I think these families deserve an explanation.' The lawyer added that the family who received the wrong body had been left 'in limbo'. He said: 'If [it] isn't their relative, the question is, who is it in that coffin? Presumably it's another passenger and their relatives have been given the wrong remains. 'The coroner also has a problem because she has an unidentified person in her jurisdiction.' The remains found by search and rescue teams at the crash site were badly burnt, mutilated or fragmented. Some were identified by DNA and others by dental records. Families could not verify the Indian authorities' identifications themselves and some reportedly received remains from Ahmedabad's civil hospital in an undignified plastic container. Altaf Taju, from Blackburn, Lancashire, lost his parents Adam, 72 and Hasina, 70, and his brother-in-law Altafhusen Patel, 51. 'Nobody looked at the remains,' he said. 'We weren't allowed to. They just said, 'This is your mother or father,' and gave us a paper label with an ID number on it. We had to take their word for it. 'It's horrific that this could have happened, but what could anyone do?' Mr Taju was not affected by the mix-ups because his relatives were buried in India. The bodies of British victims to be buried in the UK were repatriated by Air India. Mr Healy-Pratt added: 'On the known evidence, the chain of custody of these lost loved ones was unacceptably poor. 'We are investigating the causes of those failures and demanding answers on behalf of these deserving British families. 'We await formal responses from Air India, and their emergency response contractors – Kenyons International Emergency Services.'
Indian Express
23-07-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
‘Handled with utmost professionalism': India on UK news report claiming wrong bodies returned after Air India crash
India on Wednesday responded to a report by a UK publication claiming that the remains of some British victims of the June 12 Air India crash in Ahmedabad were wrongly identified before repatriation. In a statement issued on Tuesday, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said: 'We have seen the report and have been working closely with the UK side from the moment these concerns and issues were brought to our attention. All mortal remains were handled with utmost professionalism and with due regard for the dignity of the deceased.' He added that Indian authorities are continuing to coordinate with their British counterparts to address any ongoing concerns. The Daily Mail, a tabloid newspaper published in the UK, cited an aviation lawyer representing several families, who said grieving relatives in the UK were informed of grave errors in the identification of bodies. One family had to cancel funeral plans after discovering that the coffin delivered to them contained the remains of an unidentified passenger, the report alleged. In another case, remains of more than one victim were reportedly placed in a single casket and had to be separated before burial, Daily Mail claimed. The alleged mistakes apparently came to light during identity verification conducted by Inner West London coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox, who used DNA samples provided by the families. The Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner had crashed shortly after taking off from Ahmedabad, killing 241 people onboard, including 52 British nationals. Another 19 people on the ground were also killed, and 67 were seriously injured. A preliminary report by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), released on July 10, said both of the aircraft's fuel switches were found in the cut-off position immediately after takeoff—cutting off fuel supply to the engines and leading to the crash. The controversy comes just ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the UK, where he is expected to meet his counterpart Keir Starmer to sign a much-anticipated free trade agreement.
