DNA test to decide identity of 22

Officials of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) have also recovered the Digital Flight Data Acquisition Unit (DFDAU),a parallel unit of the DFDR that records flight parameter but for shorter durations.

Analysis of CVR and flight data will take about a fortnight.

Officials in Mangalore said they had already handed over 128 of the 158 bodies that were recovered from the crash site without counter-claims. As many as 22 bodies could not be identified and the relatives will have to wait for DNA tests to ascertain identity. Sampling for DNA tests began on Sunday afternoon and the results could take at least a week,district officials said.

The confusion over the identification of the charred bodies was highlighted on Sunday when a Mangalore family who had claimed a body as that of their own returned it to the Wenlock Hospital mortuary in the light of a counter-claim from a Kasargode family.

First identified as the body of 16-year-old Aaron Joel Fernandes,a body has now been identified as that of Mohammed Ismail,26,from Kasargod,officials at the Wenlock Hospital said.

Relatives of Aaron,a student who had gone to visit his parents in Dubai during the summer break,had initially identified his body on Saturday,taken its custody and placed it in the mortuary of a private hospital. A counter-claim was,however,made by the family of Mohammed Ismail on Sunday and the body was returned to the Wenlock Hospital for authentication,police officials involved with the process of handing over bodies said. 

“The claim by the Kasargod family seemed to be very authentic so we had to recall the body. The family of Aaron has now decided to await the DNA tests on 22 unidentified bodies to identify their kin,” a district official said. Confusion also remained over claims to bodies first identified as that of Sukumaran,Reju John and Akshay.

— with Raghvendra Rao in New Delhi