Air India plane crash: Families in Ahmedabad endure agonising wait for victims’ bodies

Families just want the bodies of their loved ones.

They have gathered in the scorching summer heat outside the morgue in the Indian city of Ahmedabad, and crane their necks to get a glimpse of the next stretcher carrying a body bag to a waiting ambulance.

The process for identifying bodies after Thursday’s Air India plane crash is painstaking and some have been burnt beyond recognition. All but one of the 242 people on board the Boeing 787 Dreamliner died.

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DNA samples are being matched with relatives, but patience is running thin.

The wait for Lila Behan is agonising. She wails and cries, longing to see her grandson Akash one last time.

She tells Sky News that he was outside when the aircraft crashed into their quarters.

There was fire all around, her daughter-in-law Sita ran towards the flames and got severely burned. She’s fighting for her life in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

“I can’t even see my child’s face now, they said he’s so severely burnt. But I just want to see him for one last time,” she says.

Anand Thanki lost three members of his extended family, including an infant. All were British nationals from Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.

His sister-in-law Raxa had travelled to India with her daughter-in-law Yasha and infant grandson Rudra for a religious ceremony.

Raxa lost her husband to cancer two months ago, and this was a ritual she needed to perform.

Anand tells Sky News: “It’s a big loss, but what can we do? We can only blame our fate, it’s probably written for us.

“Worst was for my nephew who had dropped them at the airport, returned home and heard the news of the incident.”

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visited the crash site and assessed the situation.

He knows the city in Gujarat well, it’s personal for him.

He has been a legislator for over a decade and previously served as the chief minister of the state of Gujarat.

At the crash site, he walked around debris and the block of flats which were in the flight path of the plane.

Read more:
What we know so far
Who are the victims?
Sole survivor recounts deadly crash

The aircraft began losing altitude and less than a minute after taking off, it plummeted to the ground, erupting in a fireball.

At the hospital, Mr Modi met British national Vishwash Kumar Ramesh – the only person to escape the aircraft. He spoke of his miraculous escape.

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The scale of the tragedy has been compounded by its location. The plane came down right in the heart of a built-up neighbourhood, with the front of the aircraft crashing into residential quarters for medical students.

The wheels and tail of the plane are embedded in the top floor of one of the buildings, where many had gathered for lunch in a dining hall.

Plates are still on tables – evidence that residents were eating when the aircraft tore through.

There were at least 23 victims on the ground, including students, doctors and family members. Some are in a critical condition.

The cause of the crash remains unknown. Investigators will now begin the long and complex process of establishing what went wrong.

But many families will grapple with the unimaginable loss after one of the worst disasters in India’s aviation history.