A lot of airports don't allow more than one engine to be started at the gate. I can think of numerous reasons, one being that other engines may be too close to the aerobridge.
Excerpts from BOM 'START-UP & PUSH-BACK PROCEDURES' (Jepp page 10-1P5):
When pilot is ready for start-up, he shall seek confirmation from the ground crew for hazard free zone prior to starting ACFT engines. On receipt of the clearance, pilot shall read back the push-back clearance given by ATC, then coordinate with ground crew for push-back and start-up of the ACFT.
To expedite departure, the Pilot-In-Command may start engines (on idle power) before commencing push-back on the ACFT stand, in coordination with the ground crew.
No cross-bleed start-up by ACFT is permitted till the push-back and/or pull ahead procedure is complete and the ACFT is aligned with the taxilane/taxiway center-line marking.
Pilots shall adhere to the push-back and start-up procedures and will use minimum breakaway power.
Pilots shall use minimum taxi power when operating on the apron areas to minimize effect of jet blast in the surrounding areas.
Looks like stand 28 is a taxi out spot, over at what was the old Sahar domestic airport terminal. I don't see much other guidance for start on a taxi out spot other than the pushback procedures above.
The taxi procedure is given as:
Power out facing North-West on taxilane K1. Taxi out via taxilane K1.
Something doesn't add up.
The first report said that he was ingested when the engine started. Even if he was standing right next to the engine as it started, surely it wasn't immediately producing enough power to ingest him as it spooled up to idle.
The next report said that he was standing by the nosegear when it happened. Had that been true, we'd be killing people every day.
No doubt something horrible happened, but it doesn't seem that we have the full story yet.
As with much of U.S. media, aviation reporting in India is influenced by the tabloid news style emphasizing sensational and horrific aspects over factual reporting. At times it almost seems to me like details are invented to flesh in missing parts of the news story.
Some of these reporting discrepancies are probably due to the polyglot Indian culture.
In BOM, often the eyewitness and expert interviews in the news are conducted in Hindi or Marathi and translated into the local BOM dialect of English.
Throughout Asia and the Middle East many of our ground engineers also speak Tamil or Malayalam as well. Those folks have fixed my plane so many times over the years.
Anyway, AI mourns the loss of a colleague:
Air India offers job, Rs 5 lakh ex-gratia to dead technician's kin
By PTI | 17 Dec, 2015, 04.20PM IST
MUMBAI: Air India Chairman Ashwani Lohani today announced an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh [about USD $7,500 - Airbubba] and a job in the airline to the family of the AI engineer who was killed in a freak accident wherein he got sucked in by the engine.
"We have lost a family member. An ex-gratia amount of Rs 5 lakh has been given to the family. We have also offered a job to the family of the victim," Lohani told reporters at the airport today.
He said the funeral of Ravi Subramanian, in his 40s, will be held tomorrow and a two-minute silence will be observed in AI offices across the network at 11 AM.
When asked about the reason of the accident, according to him, he said since the regulator DGCA is already conducting an inquiry into the incident it will not be proper for him to comment.
However, he said "initially it seems that there was some communication gap. No disciplinary action has been taken against anyone till now".
In a freak accident last evening involving an AI flight (619, an Airbus 319) to Hyderabad from Mumbai, a service engineer, who was signalling the aircraft to reverse before take-off, got sucked in by the roaring engine and died immediately.
The impact of the engine was so hard that the remains of the body could not even be sent for postmortem.
Air India offers job, Rs 5 lakh ex-gratia to dead technician's kin - The Economic Times