PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) was informed on Thursday that the foreign experts had completed reinvestigation into the Airblue plane crash incident and the report would be handed over to the government soon.
Obaidur Rehman Abbasi, senior legal officer of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and a representative of the federal government, informed the court that two foreign experts of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), including Dr Andre De Kock, a technical officer, and Thormodour Thormdsson, a standards and procedures officer, completed the reinvestigation within a period of seven days, from June 3 to 9.
They informed the two-member bench comprising PHC Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan and Justice Mian Fasihul Mulk that the experts would compile the report and submit it to the government soon.
On January 19, a division bench headed by Justice Dost Muhammad Khan had rejected the CAA investigation and directed the federal government to constitute a new board of inquiry under international laws for revisiting the probe through international experts. The bench also directed the CAA and Ministry of Defence to submit complete progress report on safety audit of all the PIA aircraft and private airliners in the country in next hearing
At the request of petitioners, the bench also ordered the Airblue management to submit the agreement it had signed with the international insurance companies in next hearing. The court directed the Airblue management to deposit compensation amount with the PHC for distribution to 10 of the families of the victims and asked others to submit in the court their claims along with applications and compulsory documents including succession certificates for receiving the compensation.
The bench was hearing the writ petitions filed by former MNA Marvi Memon and families of several victims. Shamim Sheikh and Junaid Hamid, representatives of heirs of the plane crash victims, said the Airblue management was using delaying tactics and had not paid the compensation even after submission of succession certificates by the heirs.
The Airblue’s lawyer Waseem Sajjad objected to the role of Marvi Memon and said she was trying to get political mileage out of the issue, as none of her family members had died in the crash.
In reply to Waseem Sajjad’s arguments, she said that she had no political agenda but filed the petition to provide the victims’ families legal support against the injustices meted out to them by the federal government and Airblue management. She added that the Airblue management was blatantly violating the court orders from time to time instead of compensating the aggrieved families.