Baggage of 46 Air India Express flight crash victims identified

In a press release, Air India officials stated that the time and place of the handing over of these personal effects will be intimated individually to the relatives by the Airline management.

“The rightful claimants shall be deemed to be the individuals who have collected the interim relief given by the Airline,” the release stated and added that in case of multiple claimants, the items of baggage shall be handed over to only one claimant, who needs to produce a No Objection Letter from the other claimants.

In case of disputed claims, the Airline shall reserve the right to deny handing over of the personal effects, which would be then handled as per civil procedure.

The personal effects were handled by Kenyon International, a US-based international disaster management agency, hired by the Air India to handle the personal effects retrieved from the crash site.

The agency representatives have sifted through each and every retrieved item, disinfected, cleansed, arranged and separately sorted the items. Of these, personal effects belonging to 46 passengers have been associated and identified positively.

The identification has been confirmed either through documentary evidence found along with these items or through names inscribed on some of the items. All the items so identified have been retrieved from amongst the cabin baggage of these passengers. Of the 46 identified sets, one is that of Puttur Ismail Abdullah, a passenger who survived the crash.

No item of checked-in baggage has been recovered from the crash site, which have been completely destroyed in the fire that engulfed the crashed aircraft.

The unidentified items have also been photographed and documented, which would be used for identifying and associating with the rightful claimants. This process would take some time and the Airline management would take a final decision on the disposal of the unidentified items after consulting with civil authorities, the release stated.