KUALA LUMPUR, March 25 — Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was piloted towards the Indian Ocean and crashed into the waters there in what investigators now suspect to be suicide, The Telegraph reported citing unnamed sources.

According to the British daily, the mysterious lack of distress calls and the controlled manner in which the plane with 239 on board was flown after it was taken off course from its flight to Beijing led investigators to conclude that it was piloted “in a rational way” and without emergency.

“This has been a deliberate act by someone on board who had to have had the detailed knowledge to do what was done ... Nothing is emerging that points to motive,” the newspaper quoted a “well-placed source” within the investigation as saying.

“It just does not hinge together... [The investigators] have gone through processes you do to get the plane where it flew to for eight hours. They point to it being flown in a rational way.”

Aviation experts have early on highlighted the disabling of the Boeing 777-200ER’s Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) and transponders would point towards the crew or someone with extensive aviation and technical knowledge.

Malaysia announced on March 15 that the plane was taken off course through deliberate action and that it was focusing investigations in the direction of the 12 crew members and 227 passengers on board.

Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar later revealed that investigators were examining four possibilities for the plane’s disappearance: hijack, sabotage, personal problems and psychological issues with those on the flight.

Police also searched the homes of both MH370 captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and co-pilot Fariq Ab Hamid on March 15, just after Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced the new heading of the probe and search efforts.

But beyond a flight simulator taken from the home of Zaharie, investigators scrutinising both aviators have discovered nothing to indicate anything sinister with either man.

No indications have also been found to suggest that the two pilots or anyone else on board had links to known extremist organisations, with all the countries save Russian whose nationals were on the plane giving them a clean bill of health.

Yesterday, Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said police have interviewed over 100 people, including families of both Zaharie and Fariq, as part of the probe into the plane’s disappearance.

Najib revealed last night that analysis by UK commercial satellite firm Inmarsat and the Air Accidents Investigation Board (AAIB) concluded that MH370 was flown toward the Indian Ocean after it deviated from its flight to Beijing.

MAS yesterday informed the families of passengers and crew that it must “assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived.”

But despite sightings of debris by satellites and planes searching the area, no conclusive evidence has yet to be recovered to indicate that the plane went down in the Indian Ocean.

MH370 and the 239 people on board disappeared less than an hour after the Beijing-bound flight left Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12.41am on March 8. The plane and its passengers remain missing despite over two weeks of intensive searching by a multinational effort.