By Rosheedat Akinkunle, JKNewsMedia Reporter
THURSDAY, A lone passenger walked bloodied and limping from the wreckage of an Air India Dreamliner crash in Ahmedabad, leaving a stunned world grappling with the scale of the tragedy, and the impossibility of his survival.
Video footage emerged hours after the Thursday afternoon disaster showing a dazed man in a torn, bloodstained shirt staggering away from a flaming debris field.
He was later identified as 40-year-old Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a British national of Indian heritage, who had been seated in the emergency exit row aboard the doomed London-bound flight.
He had been travelling with his brother, who sat in a different row. Only Ramesh survived.
“Thirty seconds after takeoff, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed.
It all happened so quickly,” Ramesh told journalists from his hospital bed, speaking in Hindi to India’s national broadcaster.
The Air India Boeing 787-8 had barely left the tarmac when it plunged into buildings just beyond the airport perimeter and erupted in flames.
Packed with 242 people, including 169 Indian citizens, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese nationals, a Canadian, and 12 crew members, the jet burst into a fireball, claiming every life on board but one.
At least 24 people on the ground also perished.
Authorities in Gujarat confirmed that Ramesh, reportedly in seat 11A near the wing, escaped through a break in the fuselage.
“I opened my eyes and realised I was still alive,” he recounted. “I unfastened my seatbelt and tried to escape—and I did.”
Describing the moment of impact, he said, “The plane seemed to speed up, heading straight towards what turned out to be a hostel of a hospital.
Everything was visible in front of my eyes when the crash happened.”
Media reports showed footage of Ramesh walking, wounded but conscious, toward an ambulance shortly after the crash.
He suffered minor burns to his left hand and remains under observation at Ahmedabad Civil Hospital.
Medical staff said his condition was stable and not life-threatening.
“He is very comfortable and under strict observation,” said Dr Rajnish Patel, head of surgery.
Ramesh’s survival stunned aviation experts.
A television safety analyst noted the emergency exit row is typically near a structural spar, an area rarely survivable in high-impact crashes.
Yet somehow, the section Ramesh occupied spared him.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited him in hospital on Friday, while back in Leicester, his cousin Ajay Valgi said Ramesh had phoned relatives to say he was “fine,” though distraught over his brother’s fate.
British MP Shivani Raja, representing Leicester East, called the event “nothing short of a miracle,” while urging privacy for the grieving family.
“I think the side I was on was not facing the hostel,” Ramesh said, explaining how he managed to slip through the wreckage.
“When my door broke, I saw that there was space, and I thought I could try to slip out.”
Investigators are now working to identify remains through DNA testing, with families of the victims asked to provide samples.
The confirmed death toll currently stands at 265.
