KUALA LUMPUR, March 7 — Sakinab Shah, elder sister of Zaharie Ahmad Shah who captained the missing Flight MH370, has castigated those who would blame her brother for the mysterious disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) plane and its 239 passengers and crew on board.

As conspiracy theories mount ahead of an interim report expected to be released on the jetliner’s first year anniversary, she accused the detractors of acting like “hungry starved wolves with their twisted and conniving interpretations”, Australian daily Sydney Morning Herald reported today.

“Disgusting… no-one, be you politician, scientist, aviation expert, plane crash investigator, pilot, retired pilot, media or whoever, none of you have the right to blame Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah for any wrongdoing,” she was quoted saying in a statement.

Sakinab’s remarks follow past news reports this month citing several other pilots who suggested Zaharie or someone in the cockpit as responsible for the lost plane.

Earlier this week, an Australian daily reported Simon Hardy, a senior Boeing 777 captain with a major commercial airline, suggesting that MH370’s overflight past Penang was so Zaharie could take a “last emotional look” at his hometown before piloting the plane to its mysterious fate.

US paper the New York Times (NYT) reported Thursday a retired MAS pilot it named as Nik Huzlan as saying it was likely someone in the cockpit who had deliberately diverted the plane during its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, China, on March 8 last year, shut down the jet’s communications systems and flown on for six hours until the aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed in the ocean, killing all 239 people on board.

“Based on logic, when you throw emotion away, it seems to point a certain direction which you can’t ignore. Your best friend can harbour the darkest secrets,” he was quoted saying.

He reportedly said, however, that he has never seen anything in more than his three decades of friendship with Zaharie that would suggest the pilot was capable of doing so.

The NYT said the “rogue pilot theory” dubbed by investigators was the likeliest explanation for one of the world’s biggest aviation mysteries where the commercial plane seemingly vanished into thin air, with a current underwater search scouring a 60,000 square kilometre section of the southern Indian Ocean off West Australia yet to reveal any wreckage.

The paper reported that many, though not all, of the experts and investigators who have reviewed the scant evidence say that Zaharie, or co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, is the most probable culprit, though they point out that the evidence is circumstantial and a motive has yet to be established.

“I would say that’s my favorite, because it would fit best with what has happened,” longtime Australian airline executive Peter Marosszeky was quoted saying.

The NYT quoted unnamed people with detailed knowledge of the investigation as saying that psychological profiles of Zaharie prepared after the plane’s disappearance do not indicate that the pilot could have brought the jet down or would have had a good reason for doing so.