In Al crash, western media spins stories to pin blame on pilot

The vague and partial referencing in the preliminary report and selective media leaks have enabled vested interests to launch a smear campaign against a dead person

- Barkha Dutt

The families of those who perished in the Air India 171 crash a mere 32 seconds after takeoff deserve, at the very least, answers.

But the promptness with which Boeing has been exonerated, especially in sections of the international media and the speed with which the pilots of the aircraft have been smeared, makes me think we might never get to the truth of what took the plane down.

Take a cursory look at how this is playing out on shows hosted in the West by widely followed anchors such as Piers Morgan and Megyn Kelly. Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, the soft-spoken commander of the ill-fated plane who was monitoring and not flying when the plane crashed, has pretty much been called a suicidal murderer.

I did not know Sabharwal at all, but as an Indian, it makes my blood boil to see this sort of loose talk that is clearly designed to mock the competence of all Indian pilots. The campaign against Sabharwal peaked when The Wall Street Journal converted whispers and insinuations about the senior pilot of the plane into a direct allegation that it was he who cut off the fuel to the engines of the plane by moving the switches.

Imagine the pain and rage you would feel if you were Sabharwal’s aging and grieving father, upon reading this about your child. Such media claims, so far, have little to no concrete substantiation and have clearly been written on the basis of leaks by US safety officials who were given access to the probe process in India.