Delhi High Court Rejects PIL Seeking 'Reading Down' Of Preliminary Investigation Report On Air India Ahmedabad Plane Crash

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday dismissed a PIL seeking “reading down” of the preliminary investigation report on the Air India plane crash that took place in Ahmedabad on June 12 last year, claiming 270 lives.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia said that the prayer was “highly misconceived” as the doctrine of reading down is applied by superior courts while interpreting provisions of some statute.

The Court said that praying for reading down of a preliminary investigation report prepared by experts cannot be entertained as the field where experts operate should be left to the experts alone.

“The report sought to be read down has been prepared by experts and therefore, even if in the assessment of the petitioner, it bears some lacunae, no insistence can be put on Court by filing a petition for reading down such report,” the Court said.

The report has been prepared by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB). 270 onboard died after Air India's Boeing 787-8 aircraft operating flight AI171 to London Gatwick crashed soon after take off from Ahmedabad on June 12, 2025.

In its preliminary report on the crash, AAIB said that fuel supply to both engines of the plane was cut off within a gap of one second.

The plea filed by Suresh Chand Shrivastava, an ITT pass out engineer, sought complete information about the time of transition of cut off switches from run to cut off and exact time of flame out of the engines.

Shrivastava said that he believes that it was highly probable that the cause of the failure of engines was surge which can be confirmed by flame out times of engines and transition of each flame switch to cut off positions.

During the hearing, the CJ said that the Bench shared the concerns raised by Shrivastava but questioned whether such issues can be made subject matter of a PIL.

“Any observations made by a judicial court or this court on a preliminary report submitted by experts, how will it reflect? The petitioner may be competent and we share your concerns but in such matters, how can a petition be filed? You are wasting time of the court,” the CJ remarked.

Adding, Justice Karia said that the report prepared by an investigating agency cannot be read down by the judiciary as it is not the experts in the area.

He said that the investigation was still undergoing and Shrivastava can approach the authorities which will consider his request.

The Court refused to entertain the prayer for providing exact time of cutting off of fuel supply and of flaming out of each engine as well as for a complete time chart on the sequence of events. It said that such prayer cannot be granted by issuing a writ of mandamus.

“The information as sought by making such a prayer is in relation to the preliminary inquiry report and for that purpose, the petitioner could have approached the authorities by taking appropriate recourse to provisions of the RTI Act. And if such information was worthy of being given, the same would have been provided to the petitioner,” the Court said.

“The remedy of writ petition cannot be permitted to be put to service for such a prayer. Accordingly, we are not inclined to entertain the writ petition. The same is dismissed,” it added.

Title: SURESH CHAND SHRIVASTVA v. AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION BUREAU