标签： Asia

Nearly one year after one of India’s deadliest aviation disasters in recent history, the 90-year-old father of the senior pilot of downed Air India Flight 171 says he will not stop fighting to clear his late son’s name, just days before investigators are set to release a key update into the crash’s causes.

On June 12, 2025, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner operating the London-bound service from Ahmedabad in western India crashed mere seconds after lifting off from the runway, killing all 241 passengers and crew on board as well as 19 people on the ground, bringing the total death toll to at least 260. To date, the exact origin of the catastrophic failure remains undetermined.

A preliminary investigation report published by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) last July revealed a critical finding: the fuel control switches for both of the jet’s engines had shifted from their standard “run” setting to the “cut-off” position shortly after takeoff, cutting off fuel flow to the power units and robbing the aircraft of thrust mid-ascent. Cockpit voice recordings captured one crew member asking the other why the switches had been cut off, with the second responding that he had not moved them. Investigators have never publicly attributed either statement to either pilot, nor have they confirmed any intentional action related to the switch movement.

At the time of the crash, Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, the flight’s senior pilot, was in a monitoring role, while co-pilot Clive Kunder was handling the aircraft controls. Days after the preliminary report was released, major international outlets including The Wall Street Journal and Reuters published reports citing anonymous sources claiming that new investigation details were focusing blame on Sabharwal, with Reuters going so far as to state the cockpit recording supported the claim that the captain had cut fuel flow to the engines.

These unconfirmed media reports sparked immediate outcry. Indian pilots’ associations harshly condemned the coverage and rejected all insinuations that the senior pilot was responsible for the crash. The AAIB itself issued a formal rebuke, criticizing what it called “selective and unverified reporting” by segments of the international media, noting that drawing premature conclusions before the full investigation was completed was an “irresponsible” act.

Shortly after the reports emerged, Pushkar Raj Sabharwal, Captain Sabharwal’s 90-year-old father and a retired aviation safety officer, petitioned India’s Supreme Court to demand an independent probe into all possible crash causes. The court ruled in the family’s favor, stating that no one could publicly blame the senior pilot, as the initial investigation report contained no official suggestion of fault on his part.

Even with the court’s ruling, the relentless speculation and unconfirmed accusations have taken a heavy toll on the Sabharwal family, who continue to grieve their loss. Speaking to the BBC from his Mumbai apartment, where Captain Sabharwal lived with his father before the crash, Pushkar Raj said he feels pilots are unfairly scapegoated after aviation accidents because they are often no longer alive to defend themselves.

“You see, every time an accident takes place, the pilot is blamed. Why? It’s the simplest way to close the chapter. He is no more and cannot defend himself,” he told the outlet.

Captain Sabharwal was a veteran flier with 30 years of experience at Air India, logging more than 15,600 total flying hours, nearly 8,600 of which were on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. He was planning to retire in the near future to care full-time for his elderly father and spend more time at home. Pushkar Raj recalled his son’s last message: he called from Ahmedabad to say he was boarding the aircraft and would call again once he landed at London’s Gatwick Airport. Minutes later, the crash occurred.

Pushkar Raj remembers his son as a gentle, soft-spoken man of deep familial devotion, a trait his late wife compared to Shravan Kumar, the mythological Hindu figure revered for his unwavering commitment to his parents. Even when traveling for work, Captain Sabharwal called his father four to five times a day to check in, and never failed to update him once he reached his destination.

“I can say it is a loss, an unbearable loss,” Pushkar Raj said. “But I have to bear it. Luckily, the rest of my family is with me and I am not alone.” In the wake of the crash, Captain Sabharwal’s daughter and grandson moved from Delhi to Mumbai to support the 90-year-old, and friends and neighbors have rallied around him to help navigate the grief and chaos of the past year. Now, he finds small comfort in his daily routine, including morning walks that once were often accompanied by his son whenever he was home in Mumbai.

Ahead of the AAIB’s upcoming update to the investigation, families of the crash victims, aviation specialists, and pilot advocates alike are waiting for official answers. When asked how he would respond if the final report ultimately rules against his son, Pushkar Raj paused before saying that remaining silent would be impossible: “If I am to keep myself alive and quiet, I must forget – try to forget – which is not possible. That is my situation.” Still, he remains firm in his commitment: “He is no more, but I have to protect his reputation.”

This report is based on original correspondence with Pushkar Raj Sabharwal from the BBC, with additional context from official investigation and court records.

On Wednesday, a Pakistani military MI-17 transport helicopter crashed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir due to an unexpected technical malfunction, leaving every service member on board dead, according to official statements from the Pakistani military. Authorities have not yet released a definitive figure for the number of people aboard the aircraft, nor have they drawn any connection between the crash and a protest and strike organized by the Joint Awami Action Committee, a coalition of local groups that was recently banned by the government, which was ongoing in the region at the time of the incident.

A United States government diplomat assigned to the US Embassy in Yangon, Myanmar’s most populous urban center, has been found dead, the US Department of State has officially confirmed. Multiple anonymous members of Yangon’s diplomatic community, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not cleared to speak publicly on the active case, have shared additional details about the incident that have not been made public by official authorities.

According to the sources, the diplomat’s body was discovered approximately two weeks ago at the Sakura Residence & Hotel, a long-term accommodation facility popular with international diplomats, business executives, and overseas travelers. The property sits just 1.5 kilometers, or roughly one mile, from the US Embassy compound in central Yangon. The sources also confirmed that local Myanmar police have detained a Thai national woman as part of their ongoing probe into the death, which investigators are currently treating as a suspected homicide.

When reached for comment by the Associated Press, both US diplomatic officials based in Thailand and the US Embassy in Myanmar directed all inquiries about the case to the State Department’s headquarters in Washington. In an emailed response to AP’s questions, the State Department confirmed only the death of a US government employee posted to Yangon, declining to release any further details.

“Out of respect for the privacy of the family and loved ones, we have no further information to provide at this time,” the statement read.

Myanmar has been locked in widespread internal conflict since February 2021, when the country’s military seized power in a coup that ousted the democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. The ruling junta now faces ongoing resistance from a broad coalition of ethnic minority militias and pro-democracy armed groups, and the country’s authorities have a well-documented pattern of restricting public access to information on sensitive cases.

When contacted by an AP reporter, the duty officer at the local police precinct that oversees the Sakura Residence & Hotel area refused to provide any comment and ended the call abruptly. The on-site manager of the hotel also declined to answer questions about the incident. Both the Thai Embassy in Yangon and Thailand’s national Ministry of Foreign Affairs similarly declined to confirm whether they had extended consular assistance to the detained Thai woman, offering no additional details on the case.

Matthew Lee, an Associated Press correspondent based in Washington, contributed reporting to this article.

After months of tentative calm along one of South Asia’s most volatile frontiers, Pakistan has reignited cross-border hostilities with a series of deadly air strikes targeting militant positions inside Afghanistan, leaving conflicting casualty reports and threatening a fresh escalation of tensions between the two neighboring nations. Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar confirmed Wednesday that the operation, framed as “calibrated strikes,” successfully destroyed four pre-selected militant sites along the shared border, with official Pakistani counts putting the militant death toll at 26. The casualty narrative is sharply contested by Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban government, however, which says the strikes hit civilian population centers across three eastern Afghan provinces — Kunar, Khost, and Paktika — leaving 13 civilians dead, including 11 children, one woman, and one elderly man. This new flare-up marks the first major escalation of violence between Pakistan and Afghanistan since February, when large-scale border clashes claimed hundreds of lives on both sides. The outbreak of fighting on Wednesday breaks a ceasefire agreement the two countries reached last October, which had been reached to end weeks of deadly back-and-forth clashes that had already destabilized the already restive border region. Tarar emphasized that the cross-border strikes were a direct response to a wave of recent terrorist attacks targeting Pakistani territory, framing the operation as a necessary defensive measure. He added that all strikes were focused exclusively on confirmed militant hideouts, safe havens, a weapons training facility, and an ammunition cache located inside Afghanistan. “Pakistan has always strived for maintaining peace and stability in the region, but at the same time the safety and security of our citizens remains our top priority,” Tarar said in his official statement. Long-standing mutual distrust underpins the latest confrontation: Islamabad has for years repeatedly accused Kabul of allowing militant groups that stage attacks inside Pakistan to operate freely from Afghan soil, a charge the Taliban administration has consistently rejected. In the wake of Wednesday’s strikes, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid reaffirmed the government’s position that Afghanistan never permits any armed group to use its territory to launch attacks against neighboring countries, contradicting Pakistan’s core justification for the operation. Since the heavy fighting in February, sporadic low-level clashes have continued to disrupt border communities, and the international community has repeatedly called on both governments to exercise restraint and return to diplomatic negotiations to resolve their long-standing border disputes. Global leaders have repeatedly warned that sustained hostilities between Pakistan and Afghanistan risk triggering a broader regional crisis that could destabilize already fragile security across South Asia.

JAKARTA, Indonesia – In a ruling that has reignited long-running debates over military accountability and impunity for attacks on human rights defenders in Indonesia, a military tribunal handed down guilty convictions and prison sentences of up to three years Wednesday to four active-duty intelligence service members for a brutal acid assault on a prominent local rights campaigner.

The four convicted personnel include three Indonesian Navy Marines – Sgt. Edi Sudarko, First Lt. Budhi Hariyanto Widhi Cahyono, and Capt. Nandala Dwi Prasetya – and one Indonesian Air Force officer, Lt. Sami Lakka. All four were assigned to the intelligence division of the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI) at the time of the March attack, which targeted Andrie Yunus, a human rights lawyer and senior organizer with the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence, widely known by its Indonesian acronym KontraS.

The assault unfolded as Yunus rode his motorcycle through central Jakarta, shortly after he finished recording a podcast discussing the TNI’s growing political influence over the Indonesian civilian government. Attackers threw concentrated hydrochloric acid directly at Yunus’s face, leaving the 27-year-old with severe full-thickness burns and permanent vision impairment in his right eye.

The three-judge panel of the Jakarta Military Court handed down varied sentences across the four defendants: Sudarko, identified as the organizer who recruited the other co-conspirators, received the maximum three-year prison term, while Cahyono was sentenced to two and a half years behind bars. Prasetya was ordered to serve two years, and Lakka received an 18-month sentence. Both Sudarko and Cahyono, who was found to have proposed the acid attack plot, have been dishonorably discharged from the TNI.

In reading the court’s verdict, presiding judge Fredy Isnartanto condemned the actions of the convicted soldiers, noting that as serving service members, they had violated their core oaths of duty by targeting the activist. “The defendants, as TNI service members, betrayed their duties by deliberately throwing acid at Andrie Yunus,” Isnartanto stated. “Their actions damaged the image of the Indonesian military and demonstrated clear arrogance. The attack inflicted lasting trauma and suffering on the victim and caused permanent damage to his eye.”

The verdict was met with immediate and widespread criticism from domestic and international human rights groups, which argue the ruling deliberately ignored evidence of potential coordination and involvement by higher-ranking military officials, and that the lenient sentences fail to deliver meaningful justice for the attack.

Amnesty International Indonesia’s regional office warned that the prosecutors’ lenient sentencing requests and the court’s narrow focus on only four low- to mid-ranking soldiers reinforced widespread fears that the entire proceedings amounted to a show trial designed to deflect scrutiny rather than uncover the full truth. The organization has called for a new investigation led by civilian judicial authorities to identify and prosecute any individuals who ordered or funded the attack.

Indonesia’s independent National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), which launched its own parallel probe into the assault, concluded that the attack was a pre-planned, coordinated operation that likely involved far more individuals than the four defendants. The commission’s findings also documented multiple violations of Yunus’ fundamental rights, including his right to personal security, freedom from cruel and degrading treatment, and right to equal access to justice.

Prosecutors in the military trial had claimed the four men acted entirely on their own initiative, with no superior orders. They argued the attack was motivated by personal anger over Yunus’ public criticism of the military, claiming the soldiers’ only goal was to “teach him a lesson” for his activism. Yunus, a leading voice for security sector reform and an end to military impunity in Indonesia, rose to prominence last year as a key organizer of widespread public protests opposing proposed amendments to Indonesia’s military law that would expand the armed forces’ already broad authority over civilian governance. Colleagues confirm Yunus has faced repeated threats and intimidation tied to this high-profile advocacy work.

Per representatives from the Advocacy Team for Democracy (TAUD), the civil society group supporting Yunus through the legal process, the activist refused to testify at the trial, which opened in late April. Yunus cited two core reasons for his refusal: he is still undergoing ongoing medical recovery, including multiple skin graft surgeries to treat his burn injuries, and he has no confidence that the military court would deliver an impartial, fair ruling.

Last week, a civilian court at the South Jakarta District Court partially granted a pretrial motion filed by Yunus, ordering Jakarta Police to resume their investigation into the attack to ensure full justice and protection for Yunus and other rights defenders. The civilian judges backed Komnas HAM’s longstanding call for expanded investigation to identify additional perpetrators, including any civilian co-conspirators. Both Komnas HAM and a broad coalition of Indonesian civil society groups estimate that more than a dozen individuals were involved in planning and carrying out the assault.

The conviction has drawn new international attention to the persistent problem of unpunished attacks on human rights activists in Indonesia. The case echoes the decades-long unresolved assassination of Munir Said Thalib, the iconic founder of KontraS and leading critic of military corruption, who was poisoned with arsenic on a flight to Amsterdam in 2004. While a single low-ranking intelligence agent was convicted in that killing, evidence of higher-level involvement has never been fully investigated or prosecuted.