The Air India flight 171 which crashed in Ahmedabad last year was allegedly a result of an ‘intentional act’, rather than a mechanical or technical failure.
An Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera came out with these claims citing sources in aviation agencies. However, the Italian newspaper’s account is based on unnamed sources and preliminary interpretations, and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has yet to release its final report.
It may be mentioned that, the deadly air plane crash occurred in June 2025, killing a total of 260 people, regarded as one of the worst aviation disasters in India in decades.
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As per the report, Indian investigators found that the engine fuel switches were manually shut down before the crash occurred. The report said key evidence included cockpit voice recordings, cleansed of background noise, identifying which pilot moved the fuel switch “from RUN to CUTOFF”.
In December 2025, AAIB investigators travelled to Washington, where they re-analysed the aircraft’s black box data at the US National Transportation Safety Board laboratories, focusing particularly on cleaned-up cabin audio recordings, Corriere della Sera reported.
The conclusions mentioned in the newspaper are based on unnamed sources and unofficial information.
It is unclear so far whether the final probe report will explicitly pin responsibility, the name at the centre of it all is the aircraft’s pilot commander, Sumeet Sabharwal, who died in the crash, Corriere della Sera reported.
The report wrote, “Responsibilities remain unclear: the main suspect is Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, who, as emerged a month after the crash, suffered from depression.”
As per report
Published in India Today
