Forty-year-old air passenger Vishwash Kumar Ramesh just “stood up and ran” amid the smoke and the fire, as bodies and fragments of fuselage lay all around him.
The British national was till late on Thursday night the lone known survivor of the horrific crash of the Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner in Ahmedabad.
He was under treatment for serious injuries to his chest, eyes and legs at the Civil Hospital, Asarwa, in Ahmedabad but was said to be “stable”.
“Thirty seconds after takeoff, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly,” Ramesh told reporters from his hospital bed.
“When I got up, there were bodies all around me. I was scared. I stood up and ran,” Ramesh said.
Ramesh added: “There were pieces of the plane everywhere. Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to hospital.”
In the evening, Ahmedabad police commissioner G.S. Malik had been the first to speak of “one survivor” who had been in seat 11A and was being treated in hospital.
Ramesh, still holding his boarding pass when he spoke to reporters in hospital, said he had been seated in 11A.
He said he had been living in London for 20 years, and was returning to the UK with his elder brother Ajay Kumar Ramesh after visiting their family in India. Ajay’s status remains unknown.
“My brother Ajay was seated in a different row on the plane. We had visited Diu. He was travelling with me but I can’t find him any more. Please help me find him,” Ramesh said.
Desperate families searched for survivors at the hospital. Among them were relatives of former Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani, who was on the flight and did not survive the crash.