Ask him what he does and he says “social work”.

On June 12, when AI171 crashed moments after takeoff from Ahmedabad, killing 274 people, Sanjay Baggi was at the crash site within minutes.

What he did next goes beyond the normal connotations of “social work”: He carried three nearly collapsed medical students down from the upper floors of their burning hostel, and then helped the fire brigade retrieve 28 bodies from the smouldering wreckage.

Four days after the crash, the 49-year-old autorickshaw driver is still unable to fathom how he did it.

Baggi aka Patni was sitting on the road outside his home in Chamanpura, in the Asarwa area of Ahmedabad, on Thursday when he heard a deafening noise.

“It sounded like a bomb blast. Then I saw smoke billowing,” he told The Telegraph.

Without wasting a second, he headed towards the smoke, when most people would have run in the opposite direction in fear of their lives.

The smoke trail led Baggi to the B.J. Medical College hostel, where the plane
had crashed.

“The boundary wall is five feet high. There was nobody to help; I don’t know how I managed to scale it,” he said.

The medical students at the hostel were desperately seeking help. Those on the fourth or fifth floor were preparing to jump off holding the ends of bed sheets tied together. “I told them to hold on,” he said.

Baggi tried to run up the stairs. The fire brigade had arrived too. But he could not make it beyond three floors because of suffocation from the smoke.

He returned, wrapped a sheet around his mouth and nose, and went up. He brought down three students on his shoulders and sent them off to the Civil Hospital, courtesy the 108 Emergency Service.

“I then went behind the hostel and, with the help of others, brought out 28 bodies. They were totally charred,” he said.

Baggi said he had helped carry out the two dead pilots too.

Sanjay Baggi at the crash site on June 12

“We have seen planes; we know where the pilots sit. The bodies were burning. These were cooled by the fire brigade and then I took them out with the help of others,” he said.

Baggi said he had no words to describe the condition of the charred bodies.

The Boeing Dreamliner contained 1.25 lakh litres of highly inflammable fuel.

The fire brigade, police and other agencies were already on the spot when Baggi arrived. It did not prevent him from rushing to help.

“I had never seen anything like it before. I wanted to do something. Where is your humanity if you don’t help in such a crisis?” he said.

After a point, Baggi was exhausted. “I just sat down on one side. The fire brigade and the police gave me water. I went home after some time,” he said.

But he has been unable to sleep well since then. He continues to help the victims’ families, running around to arrange things for them.

Till Monday morning, the authorities had handed over the bodies of 47 victims to their relatives.

The families of the rest are waiting, at the Civil Hospital or at home, for a call from the hospital authorities asking them to come and receive the bodies.

On Monday, the crash investigators recovered the cockpit voice recorder, which captures all cockpit sounds from the pilots’ conversations to any alarms and ambient sounds.

The flight data recorder — which records parameters such as the altitude, engine performance and speed, among others — was recovered on Friday.

Designated desks have been set up at the Civil Hospital for the families to settle insurance claims and obtain necessary certificates, the Gujarat government said.

Former Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani was cremated in Rajkot on Monday evening. Union home minister Amit Shah was present.