KUALA LUMPUR, May 19 — After repeated demands by the families of those aboard MH370, Putrajaya agreed today to seek Inmarsat’s permission to release the raw data that led to the belief that the missing jet had ended its flight in the Indian Ocean.

In a brief statement here, Malaysia’s acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said he has instructed the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) to discuss the information release with the British satellite communications firm.

“This is consistent with our stand for greater transparency and prioritizing the interests of the family members of those on board MH370,” the minister said.

Last week, Hishammuddin told a press conference that the raw data was not in Malaysia’s hands and that any request for its release should be communicated to the UK-based Inmarsat.

“The raw data is with Inmarsat, not with Malaysia, not with Australia, not with MAS. So if there is any request for this raw data to be made available to the public, it must be made through Inmarsat,” he reportedly said.

But shortly after the minister’s statement, the firm refuted the claim, and insisted that it had surrendered all information on MH370 over to investigators here.”Inmarsat’s raw data was provided to the investigation team at an early stage in the search for MH370,” Inmarsat said in a statement, according to a news report by the American cable and satellite TV channel CNN.

According to CNN, Inmarsat “blames” Malaysia for failing to release the information.

The firm also went on to defend its data, which has come under heavy criticism by foreign scientists and families aboard the aircraft, saying it has “high confidence” in its analysis of the plane’s last-known location.

It was the analysis of Inmarsat’s data that led to the conclusion that the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 had ended in the southern Indian Ocean, thousands of miles away from the plane’s original flight path to Beijing.

“We have very high confidence in the analysis of this data, which was independently evaluated by the international teams accredited to the official investigation,” the British firm said in another excerpt of its statement carried by CNN.

The Boeing 777 jetliner has been missing for over 70 days since March 8 when it departed Malaysian waters with 239 people on board.

Initial search efforts were concentrated on the waters between Malaysia and Vietnam where MH370 was last heard from before it lost contact with the Subang Air Traffic Control.

But Inmarsat later confirmed more than a week later that satellites picked up electronic signals or “handshakes” from the aircraft well after it disappeared from sight, and that these signals had likely come from somewhere over the southern Indian Ocean.

The international hunt for MH370 then moved entirely to the large ocean swathe somewhere off the coast of Perth in Australia, despite doubts raised by experts over the aircraft’s drastic change of direction.

But until today, there has still been no sign of the missing aircraft. The hunt has now gone underwater, after experts confirmed that the aircraft’s black boxes have completely run out of batteries and would no longer be releasing signals.

Some 350 family members of passengers aboard the jetliner have been demanding that raw data be released for independent analysis, preferably to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the non-profit research facility responsible for finding the remains of missing Air France Flight 447 in 2009, almost two years after it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.

Amid questions about how the investigation has been conducted, the family members made the demand in an open letter sent to the leaders of Malaysia, China and Australia, earlier this month on May 8.