Govt forms panel to probe plane crash, asked to submit report in 3 months

The committee, according to Kinjarapu, will be headed by the home secretary and will submit its report in three months.

"To further investigate the incident and to look into all the theories and the information that is going around this incident, we felt it would be much better to have another committee also looking into the crash and also the safety. Yesterday we constituted the committee under the chairmanship of the home secretary and we wanted to have experts in the committee from various sectors," he said.

According to Kinjarapu, other members of the committee will be secretary of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, additional secretary from the Ministry of Home Affairs, a representative from the Gujarat local government, a representative from the state disaster response authority (Gujarat), police commissioner of Ahmedabad, director general of inspection and safety of the Indian Air Force, director general of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, director general of the aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, special director of the Intelligence Bureau, director of the Directorate of Forensic Science Services.

The government's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) has already initiated an investigation into the crash.

"One important update from the technical investigation, which is happening through the AAIB is the recovery of the black box yesterday around 5:00 p.m. (local time) from the site. The AAIB team believes that decoding of the black box is going to give an in-depth insight into what actually happened during the process of the crash or moments before the crash itself. We are also eagerly waiting for what the results, or the report, are going to be once the AAIB goes through its full investigation," the minister said.

The minister added that an extended surveillance into the Boeing 787 series was underway in the country.