Air India crash: DNA profiling of victims is the most daunting task, says expert

New Indian Express

13-06-2025

BENGALURU: A tragedy of the scale of Air India's Boeing 787-8 crash in Ahmedabad on Thursday is unfathomable and massive. Handling the aftermath of such accidents is an extremely tough job that requires trained, responsible and sensitive expertise. Fortunately, we do have the expertise in India.
On the one hand is the shock and scale of the tragedy, on the other is the need to have immediate boots and hands on the ground. It begins with cordoning off the areas by the police, dousing the fire by expert fire personnel, searching for survivors and rushing them to the nearest hospital, pulling out the dead bodies from inside the debris and sending them to the nearby mortuaries.
This is a humongous exercise which calls for immediate and seamless coordination of multiple agencies; from the airport authorities (in an incident like the AI171) to the local police, civic authorities, medics and paramedics, ambulance services, disaster response task force and young volunteers among others who serve as the first responders.
The most daunting task is the identification of bodies, which may have got charred or disfigured beyond recognition because of the impact of the crash and the ensuing explosion. The pressure is on forensic doctors to identify and hand over the bodies to the relatives on an urgent basis, but this kind of pressure may be counterproductive. Also, the handing of the victims over to the next of kin requires sensitivity. Sometimes, only a part of the body is available and not the whole body. There are strict guidelines for disaster management and relief, which have to be adhered to.
"DNA profiling for disaster victim identification (DVI) is considered to be one of the most reliable and efficient means to identify bodies charred with dismembered body parts," said Dr Vina Vaswani, professor, Forensic Medicine & Toxicology, and Director of the Centre for Ethics at Yenepoya (deemed to be University), Mangaluru.
According to the DVI Interpol guidelines, "In disasters, identification is established by taking a post mortem DNA sample, which is matched with their first-degree biological relative. From the relative, antemortem (information before death) information about the victim regarding dental treatment or past history of fracture surgery (including prosthetic implants) is also elicited. For instance, parents may inform them that their son or daughter had dentures or a front tooth missing," she said.