Delhi High Court dismisses PIL over information on Ahmedabad plane crash

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday (February 25, 2026) dismissed a petition seeking directions to disclose the precise moment the fuel switch on the London-bound Air India aircraft, which crashed in Ahmedabad in June last year, was moved from “run” to “cut-off”.

The petitioner, a mechanical engineer from IIT-Delhi, had urged the court that the preliminary investigation report prepared by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) include details on the “complete sequence of events” that led to the Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad last June.

A bench of Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia said the public interest litigation (PIL), which also sought a direction to the Bureau to publish such information in public domain, was “highly misconceived”.

Observing that the petitioner, Suresh Chand Shrivastava, should have taken recourse available to him under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the Bench said: “Such prayer in our considered opinion cannot be granted.” If such information is worthy of being given under the RTI Act, it would be provided, the court said.

“We are not inclined to entertain this petition which is dismissed,” the court concluded.

The petitioner’s counsel said he believed that it was highly probable that the cause of failure of both engines of the aircraft was a “surge”, which could be confirmed by “exact time of flame out of each engine and the transitions of each fuel switch to the cut-off position”.

The court, however, said, “It is a well-settled principle of law that the field where the experts operate should ordinately be left to the experts. The report which has been sought to be read down by the court in this petition has been prepared by the experts, and therefore, even if in the assessment of the petitioner, the said report bears some lacunae, no insistence can be put on the court for reading down such a report”.

Additionally, the court orally observed that investigation was still under way and the Bureau has only given a preliminary report at this stage. “You have already written to them. They will consider,” the court told the petitioner’s counsel.

In one of the worst aircraft accidents in India, a total of 260 people, including 241 passengers, died after Air India’s Boeing 787-8 aircraft operating flight AI-171 to London Gatwick crashed soon after taking off from Ahmedabad on June 12, 2025.