People offer prayers during a special prayer meeting for the crew members of the Air India flight that crashed in Ahmedabad on 12 June, on the occasion of one-month anniversary, at St Peter's Church in Mumbai, India, 12 July 2025. The Air India flight AI171, bound for London and carrying 242 people on board a Boeing 787-8 aircraft, crashed minutes after take-off in the Meghaninagar neighbourhood of Ahmedabad on 12 June. EPA/DIVYAKANT SOLANKI 
The plea by 91-year-old Pushkar Raj Sabharwal for an investigation by a panel of aviation experts, headed by a retired Supreme Court judge, came weeks after he criticised the government investigation.
He said two officials from India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau who visited him had implied that his son, pilot Sumeet Sabharwal, cut the fuel to the plane’s engine after take-off.
The government has denied such accusations, calling the investigation "very clean" and "very thorough".
India's air accidents investigation body published an interim report earlier this year saying the plane's fuel engine switches had almost simultaneously flipped from run to cutoff just after takeoff.
(Reporting by Arpan Chaturvedi in Delhi; Writing by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala and Michael Perry)