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India's highest court declares that the Air India crash report is not a slander against the pilot

India's highest court announced on Friday that the preliminary report of an Air India crash in which 260 people died in June did not implicate anything against the captain. However, it will listen to a request from the father of the pilot on November 10, for an independent investigation.

After criticising the government's investigation, 91-year old Pushkar Raj Sabharwal called for an independent investigation to be conducted by a panel led by a retired Supreme Court Judge.

He claimed that two officials of India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, who visited him, had suggested that his son, pilot Sumeet Saharwal, had cut the fuel supply to the plane's engines after takeoff.

The investigation was described as "very thorough" and "very clean" by the government.

India's air accident investigation body published a preliminary report in early this year that said the fuel engine switches on the plane had switched from run to shutoff almost simultaneously just after takeoff. (Reporting and writing by Arpan Chaturvedi, Delhi; editing by Mrigank Dahniwala and Michael Perry).

(source: Reuters)