Canberra, May 23: Australian investigators have rejected claims that the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was deliberately brought down by the pilot.
Speculation that the jet was the subject of a "controlled ditching" into the sea was dismissed on Tuesday by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, the BBC reported.
The bureau maintains that the pilot was unconscious during the final moments. The passenger plane disappeared in 2014 while flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board.
The official search for the wreckage of MH370, also involving Malaysia and China, was called off in January in 2017, after 1,046 days.
Investigators from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) have said that the plane was out of control when it plunged into the southern Indian Ocean.
The theory that the pilot was in full control of the plane at the time of the crash was revived of late in a new book by former Canadian air crash investigator Larry Vance, the BBC reported.
However the ATSB's search director, Peter Foley, on Tuesday defended the bureau's findings, insisting that investigators had explored all the advice and analysis provided.
"We have quite a bit of data to tell us that the aircraft, if it was being controlled at the end, it wasn't very successfully being controlled," he added.
Flight MH370 disappeared after it stopped sending communications hours into its flight on March 8, 2014.
The subsequent hunt formed one of the largest surface and underwater searches in aviation history. Underwater searches turned up nothing, but small pieces of debris from the plane were washed up on islands in the Indian Ocean and on the African coast.
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Vadodara: The main accused in the March 14 car crash in Vadodara, Rakshit Chaurasia, had smoked marijuana but was not under the influence of alcohol, according to the primary report from Gandhinagar’s Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL). Chaurasia, a 20-year-old law student, was driving a speeding car that rammed into two-wheelers near Muktanand crossroads in Karelibaug, killing a woman and injuring several others.
The FSL’s findings, as cited by police officials, revealed that Chaurasia’s blood sample tested positive for marijuana. Two others who were in the car with him—Praanshu Chauhan and Suresh Bharwad—also tested positive for the same. All three have been booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985.
Chaurasia has also been booked under s. 185 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, which deals with driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. He is currently lodged in Vadodara Central Jail. Chauhan has also been arrested, while Bharwad remains absconding.
According to Deputy Commissioner of Police, Zone 4, Panna Momaya, the blood reports confirmed drug consumption. "They were driving the car after smoking marijuana," she said.
CCTV footage showed the car speeding before taking a sharp turn and hitting the two-wheeler. In the moments before the crash, Chaurasia was seen behaving erratically, shouting "another round, another round," followed by chanting “Om Namah Shivay” and calling out a girl’s name, “Nikita.”
Later, Chaurasia told reporters that a pothole caused the accident and claimed he was driving at 50 km/hr. He also said the airbag deployment had obstructed his view.