A mother whose son died in the Air India crash last month says her family is “heartbroken” after being told his remains were wrongly identified.
The London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed into a medical college shortly after taking off from Ahmedabad Airport on June 12, killing 241 people on board.
Some 169 Indian passengers and 52 British nationals were killed, making it one of the deadliest plane crashes in terms of the number of UK fatalities.
Among them were Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek, 39, and his husband Jamie, 45, who had been returning home to Orpington after celebrating their wedding anniversary.
The couple ran the Wellness Foundry in Ramsgate and London.
Mr Greenlaw-Meek’s mother, Amanda Donaghey, told The Sunday Times she flew to India after the crash in order to find her son’s remains, providing a DNA sample at Ahmedabad’s Civil Hospital to assist the identification process.
Following a match on June 20, she returned to the UK with the coffin.
But on July 5, as Mr Greenlaw-Meek and his husband’s families prepared to bury the married couple together, police told Ms Donaghey that DNA tests carried out in the UK showed Mr Greenlaw-Meek’s remains were not in the coffin.
“We don’t know what poor person is in that casket,” the 66-year-old said. “I had my doubts but to be told that was heartbreaking.
“This is an appalling thing to have happened,” she added. “And we would now like the British government to do everything in its power to find out, and bring Fiongal home.”
It was revealed last week the coffin of another repatriated British victim, 71-year-old Shobhana Patel, contained remains of multiple people.
Mrs Patel died alongside her husband Ashok, 74, as they returned from a Hindu religious trip.
International aviation lawyer James Healey-Pratt, whose firm Keystone Law is representing families of victims, told Times Radio the identification issues have raised concerns over the total number of victims whose identities may have been misattributed.
“We know that 12 caskets were repatriated from India to the UK,” he said. “Of those 12, two had been mishandled, misidentified.
“And so if you extrapolate that sample, you’re looking at 40 mishandled remains out of 240. So that’s a very large number, but we simply don’t know.
“And to date, the Indian authorities have not been transparent or helpful about that, which is why there was pressure put on by the families to the FCO and the Prime Minister’s office.
“And this was actually mentioned in the meeting at Chequers between Keir Starmer and Prime Minister Modi on Thursday.
“So the families are waiting to hear, first thing next week, about what actions are really being done in India to provide some degree of assurance.”
It is understood no blame is being put on any UK agency for the blunders, Mr Healy-Pratt previously told the PA news agency.
The only surviving passenger on the plane was Briton Vishwash Kumar Ramesh.
A preliminary report into the incident from India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau found both of the plane’s fuel switches moved to the “cut-off” position “immediately” after take-off, stopping fuel supply to the engine.
It has sparked questions over whether the crash was deliberate.
