M’lore crash: 12 bodies wrongly identified

Hyderabad: In the Mangalore air crash of May 2010, in at least 12 cases, the body remains were mistakenly identified and claimed by relatives.
The families which claimed the body remains based on morphological features and personal effects performed the last rites presuming that they had rightly identified the mortal remains of their kin.
These facts came out as a result of the DNA profiling done by the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) in Hyderabad whose services had been requisitioned following the incident.
It may be mentioned here that on May 22, 2010, the Air India Express flight 1X812 from Dubai had overshot the runway and plunged into a valley at the Mangalore airport. In the mishap, out of the 168 people on board, 158 passengers, including six crew members were killed. A woman and seven men survived the disaster.
What happened following the disaster was, the body remains of 136 victims were handed over to their families who identified and claimed them. But the remains of 22 more victims were not identified. The families could not say for sure whether the victims indeed were their kin. In the DNA profiling that was done for the 22 victims comparing their profiles with 32 relatives who were still waiting to identify their kin, the results that came up threw up a shock.
First, based on the autosomal and Y-chromosome DNA profiling data, scientists established the identities of 10 of the body remains within the next couple of days or so.
However, it was found that the rest of the 12 sets of body remains were not from the biological relatives of any of the claimants. This only show that in the originally claimed body remains of 136 passengers, 12 had been mistakenly identified and claimed by families believing it to be their kin. The findings of the study were also published later in a scientific journal `Current Science'.
07/10/11 Times of India

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

Categories: Air India Budget Oct 2011, Safety Oct 2011