Missing Malaysian Airliner MH 370: FBI to investigate pilot's wife

London, March 24: The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will be questioning the wife of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, who commanded the missing Malaysian airliner, amid growing suspicions that he may have hijacked the flight.

Faizah Khan, a mother of three, will face questioning in an investigation conducted by the FBI, the Daily Mirror reported Monday.

American intelligence, along with Malaysian police, are still looking into the backgrounds of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and his co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid.

Sources close to Shah have said that his personal life was quite complicated. His relations with his wife had deteriorated to the point where he was no longer in a relationship with her, despite living together with their children in the same house.

His unstable personal life and his support of an opposition political leader recently jailed in Malaysia, has brought him into prime focus.

The police are also examining the two-minute phone call that Captain Zaharie received from a mysterious woman who used a mobile number with a fake identity, before take-off March 8.

Investigators are still trying to find clues in Captain Zaharie's flight simulator which was found at his residence by the Malaysian police. All the game logs in the personal flight simulator were deleted Feb 3. He played three games on his simulator -- Flight Simulator X, Flight Simulator 9 and X Flight Simulator.

FBI agents are still investigating the simulator's hard disk.

The police searched Shah's house soon after Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak confirmed last week that the plane was suspected to have been diverted deliberately.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished mysteriously about an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur March 8.

The Boeing 777-200ER was initially presumed to have crashed off the Vietnamese coast in the South China Sea. The plane was scheduled to land in Beijing at 6.30 a.m. the same day. The 227 passengers on board included five Indians, 154 Chinese and 38 Malaysians.

Contact with the plane was lost along with its radar signal at 1.40 a.m. when it was flying over the air traffic control area of Ho Chi Minh City.

The area of the multinational search operation being conducted now for the missing jet is around 2,500 km southwest of Perth.

IANS