PESHAWAR, June 28: The Peshawar High Court bench on Thursday directed the federal government to produce the report of the safety audit done on all passenger planes of state-run Pakistan International Airlines and private companies on its orders.

Also, the defence ministry and Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) was told to submit the report of the reinvestigation into the 2010 Airblue plane crash.

The aircraft safety audit report is currently with CAA, while that of the Airblue crash reinvestigation is yet to be compiled by two foreign aviation experts.

Before flying back home on completing probe on June 8, these experts said they would submit their findings to the defence ministry within 40 days.

The production of the two reports were ordered by a bench consisting of Chief Justice Dost Mohammad Khan and Justice Mian Fasihul Mulk during the hearing into a writ petition filed by ex-MNA Marvi Memon and families of some Airblue crash victims, who sought independent inquiry into the mishap and provision of appropriate compensation.

During the hearing, the bench also sought a copy of the Airblue’s agreement with EFU Insurance for payment of compensation to the crash victims’ families and directed the representative of the petitioners, Junaid Khan, to properly file an application along with the relevant documents about denial of compensation by the private airline.

CAA senior legal adviser Obaidur Rehman Abbasi and lawyer Abdul Shakoor Paracha informed the bench that two international aviation experts reinvestigated the Airblue crash from June 3 to June 8 before returning home saying they would submit the report of their findings to the defence ministry within 40 days.

They added that the reinvestigation was ordered by the high court.

The court had earlier expressed dissatisfaction over the inquiry conducted by CAA Safety Investigation Board, which held ‘errors by pilot and inclement weather’ for the 2010 air disaster.

Mr Abbasi said CAA fully cooperated with the two experts and gave them a free hand with the inquiry.

Waseem Sajjad and Abdul Lateef Yousafzai, lawyers for Airblue, said their client had paid compensation to over 100 families and would offer the same to the remaining if they produced the sought-after documents.

During the hearing, Mr Sajjad and Ms Marvi had heated exchanged after the former said the latter was not an aggrieved person in line with Article 199 of the Constitution and that she was serving own political ends through the petition.

Ms Memon replied that the petition had long been pending with the court and now Mr Sajjad had realised that she had no cause of action to file the petition. She added that she had no political motives and rather Airblue had been cheating the crash victims’ families and that she had come to the help of the aggrieved families.

The petitioners’ counsel, Umar Farooq Adam, requested the bench to seek the Airblue-EFU Insurance compensation contract but Mr Sajjad objected to it.

The bench, however, observed that there was no harm in submitting that contract for making it part of the judicial record. It added that the court had already passed a comprehensive order regarding compensation to the families of the victims.

The bench observed that first the families of the crash victims, especially the 10 petitioners, should produce proper application and then Airblue management would be asked to immediately make the compensation payment to the court for the remaining families. It added that a very short period would be given to the private airline for the payment.

The bench asked the court’s registrar to fix the case for hearing after the said families submitted the required application and documents.