There was shock, outrage and a growing sadness among the families of at least 11 of the passengers killed in the Air India Express crash on May 22 as they come to terms with the fact that they will never be able to identify the remains of their loved ones and bury them in person.
Mangalore city police commissioner Seemanth Kumar Singh told this newspaper on Tuesday that he would have to conduct a mass burial of the bodies that remained unidentified as “it has been certified by DNA profiling that the 11 unidentified passengers killed in the crash are not related to any of the families whose samples were used for comparison”. The fact that the DNA profiles do not match has also raised doubts about whether the bodies already claimed have been correctly identified.
One of the bodies among the 11 whose DNA was tested was thought to be that of crew member Sujatha Survase, but now no one is ever likely to know as the remains of all the 11 will be buried by the authorities on Wednesday in accordance with Section 34 of the Disaster Management Rules.
Most families identified the bodies of their relatives with the aid of their clothes, scars and other factors, but DNA tests had to be conducted on 22 bodies as they were burnt beyond recognition. Of these, 10 were identified by DNA profiling, but one family said the body given to them was not that of their relative, while the father of four-year-old victim Zubair said he had been given the body of an adult.
On May 28 the DNA report of one more body was received from the lab, leaving only 11 to be identified. Additional deputy commissioner of police S.A. Prabhakar Sharma said it was possible that some of the bodies had got “switched” in the confusion after the crash as they were at the time identified by their physical attributes. “The DNA report will not come in the way of issuing death certificates and compensation to the relatives of the victims,” he said.