British families of the victims of the Air India crash have been sent the wrong bodies of their loved ones in a devastating series of administrative errors.
At least two families have been sent the wrong person's body or mixed remains from multiple victims.
And errors only came to light when Inner West London coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox attempted to verify their identities through DNA tests.
June 12's disaster aboard flight 171 claimed 261 lives when the plane, a Boeing Dreamliner, crashed moments after departing Ahmedabad for London Gatwick.
Among the dead were 52 British citizens returning home.
GETTY | PICTURED: Debris from the crashed Air India flight
GETTY
|PICTURED: Mourners at the Goregaon crematorium in Mumbai after the Air India crash
One family's funeral preparations came to an abrupt halt when authorities revealed their coffin contained an unidentified passenger rather than their relative, the Mail revealed.
The grieving family, referred to as Family X by their legal representative, now face an agonising wait with no body to bury.
A separate family endured the horror of receiving mixed remains from multiple crash victims in a single casket.
The fragments had to be separated before they could proceed with the burial last weekend.
Aviation lawyer James Healy-Pratt, representing numerous affected families, confirmed both incidents occurred during the repatriation of at least 12 British victims.
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And fears are rising that more errors could come to the fore, with the full extent of the errors still unknown.
The recovery operation in Ahmedabad began immediately after the aircraft struck a medical facility and residential buildings near the airport.
Local police, fire crews and disaster response teams used search dogs and advanced equipment, while volunteers searched the wreckage by hand.
The 1,500-degree heat left most victims unrecognisable, with many remains severely fragmented.
Families received remains in plastic containers rather than coffins from Ahmedabad's Civil Hospital, which served as an identification centre.
PA
|Sir Keir Starmer is now expected to address the failures directly with Indian counterpart Narendra Modi this week
"Nobody looked at the remains. We weren't allowed to," said Altaf Taju from Blackburn, whose parents and brother-in-law perished. "They just said, 'This is your mother or father', and gave us a paper label with an ID number on it."
Sir Keir Starmer is now expected to address the failures directly with Indian counterpart Narendra Modi during his state visit to Britain this week.
A high-level investigation has been launched in both London and India to determine how such catastrophic errors occurred.
The affected families have contacted their MPs, the Foreign Office, and the offices of both the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, demanding accountability from Air India and emergency response contractors, Kenyons International Emergency Services.
"We are investigating the causes of those failures and demanding answers on behalf of these deserving British families," lawyer Healy-Pratt said.