In nothing short of a miracle, one passenger survived the deadly crash on Thursday. The lone survivor has been identified as Vishwas Kumar Ramesh (39), a British national of Indian origin.
Ahmedabad Police Commissioner Gyanender Singh Malik confirmed to The Indian Express that a male passenger, seated in ’11A’, had survived the crash. Sources in the Gujarat government said they only had information of “one survivor as of now”.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who reached Ahmedabad by evening, also confirmed that there was a survivor, and he had met him in hospital. “The good news is that one person survived the crash and I am coming here after meeting him,” he said.
“Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly… When I got up, there were bodies all around me. I was scared. I stood up and ran. There were pieces of the plane all around me. Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to the hospital,” the Hindustan Times quoted Ramesh as saying.
According to the report, Ramesh said he had lived in London for 20 years, and his wife and child too live there. He said he was in India for a few days to visit his family and was going back to the UK with his brother, Ajay Kumar Ramesh (45), who was seated in a different row on the plane. “We visited Diu. He was travelling with me and I can’t find him anymore,” he said.
An Air India plane crashes moments after taking off from the Ahmedabad airport, Thursday. (Express Photo by Bhupendra Rana)
(AP adds: Ramesh found himself near debris after being thrown out of the plane and walked to a nearby ambulance for aid, a medic said. “He was disoriented with multiple injuries all over his body… But he seems to be out of danger,” Dr Dhaval Gameti, who treated Ramesh, said.
Another medic said Ramesh told him that immediately after the plane took off, it began descending and suddenly split in two, throwing him out before a loud explosion.
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People stand around debris at the site of an airplane that crashed in India’s northwestern city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat state. (Express Photo)
Ramesh called his relatives in Leicester after the crash, his cousin, Ajay Valgi, told the BBC. “He only said that he’s fine, nothing else,” Valgi said, adding that the family is “happy that he’s OK, but we’re still upset about the other brother.”
Nayan Kumar Ramesh told Sky News that his brother called his father moments after the crash to say he had survived. “He video called my dad as he crashed and said, ‘Oh the plane’s crashed. I don’t know where my brother is. I don’t see any other passengers. I don’t know how I’m alive, how I exited the plane’,” he told Sky.)
