‘My son died in the Air India crash. I was sent back the wrong body’

Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek, left, and his husband Jamie were among the 241 victims of the Air India crash

The mother of a British Air India crash victim has said her family was “heartbroken” after receiving news that the remains of her son 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 British fatalities.

Among the British victims were Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek, 39, and his husband Jamie, 45, who had been returning to Britain after celebrating their wedding anniversary in India.

Amanda Donaghey, Fiongal’s mother, told The Sunday Times that she flew to India after the crash 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 last year, she returned to the UK with Greenlaw-Meek’s coffin.

The London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed into a medical college shortly after take off from Ahmedabad airport on June 12 - Adnan Abidi/Reuters

But on July 5, as 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 that Greenlaw-Meek’s remains were not in the coffin.

“We don’t know what poor person is in that casket,” she told The Sunday Times.

“I had my doubts but to be told that was heartbreaking. This is an appalling thing to have happened.

“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 that the coffin of 71-year-old Shobhana Patel, another repatriated British victim, contained remains of multiple people.

Patel was killed alongside her husband Ashok, 74, as they returned to the UK from a Hindu religious trip.

Their son Miten Patel told The Sunday Times: “There may have been a mistake done. But for religious reasons we need to make sure my mother is my mother and not somebody else’s remains.

“Knowing 100 per cent that it is my mum is very important to us.”

Shobhana and Ashok Patel were laid to rest last week.

James Healey-Pratt, an international aviation lawyer whose firm Keystone Law is representing families of victims of the Air India crash, has told Times Radio that the identification issues have raised concerns over the total number of victims whose identities may have been misattributed.

He said: “We know that 12 caskets were repatriated from India to the UK. 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.

“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 British agency for the blunders, Mr Healy-Pratt previously said.

The only surviving passenger on the plane was Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a British businessman from Leicester, who previously told The Sun that it was a “miracle” he was alive but that he felt “terrible” he could not save his brother Ajay.

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 raised questions over whether the crash was deliberate.

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