Over 200 dead, several injured as Air India Ahmedabad-London flight crashes
This story was originally published at 22:24 IST on 12 June 2025
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AHMEDABAD – Over 200 people are feared dead and scores of others were injured after Air India's Flight AI-171 with 242 passengers on-board crashed into a hostel of medical students immediately after take-off from Ahmedabad's Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport on Thursday.
The Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner was flying to London's Gatwick airport with 169 Indians, 53 British nationals, seven Portuguese, one Canadian citizen and 12 crew members, including pilot Sumeet Sabharwal and co-pilot Clive Kunder, at 1339 IST and crashed in less than one minute after take-off.
Speaking to mediapersons after visiting the accident site and the civil hospital in Ahmedabad where casualties were brought in, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said there was little chance of saving any of the passengers on board the ill-fated aircraft. "There was over 125,000 litres of fuel inside the aircraft and the temperature was pretty high," Shah said. The home minister said that the work of recovering dead bodies from the crash site was almost over. The government has also taken DNA samples of the relatives of the passengers on board to establish the veracity of the deceased.
"The mortal remains of the deceased would be handed over to the relatives after completion of DNA tests," Shah said, adding that any final toll from the accident could only be arrived at after completion of these DNA tests.
Though no official number of deceased or injured had been released from any quarters till the time of writing this report, two separate lists of 41 injured people were released by the civil hospital authorities in Ahmedabad. One of the names in this list of injured was that of Ramesh Vishwaskumar, a British citizen of Indian origin, who is said to be the lone survivor of the plane crash. He reportedly jumped off the flight just before the crash and ran away from the ill-fated flight to survive.
Among those deceased include former chief minister of Gujarat Vijay Rupani. While several social media posts had appeared during the day suggesting that Rupani had taken the flight to London, the confirmation only came late in the evening from C. R. Patil, Gujarat unit president of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Union minister in the Narendra Modi government, who called Rupani's demise as a loss for the party. Rupani was travelling to London to meet his daughter, who currently lives there, and to join his wife, who is already in London.
Other than the 242 people on-board, the number of those injured or deceased on the ground due to the crash too remains ambiguous. The aircraft had crashed into several hostel buildings that include a food mess and residential rooms for junior doctors at the nearby BJ Medical College and Hospital, which is also considered as one of the biggest medical facilities in Asia. Most of the buildings were burnt due to aviation fuel that the aircraft was carrying in the flight. Several groups of fire-fighters, state and national disaster rescue forces, local police, and defence personnel were deployed to clear the debris and rescue any survivors.
The management of the Ahmedabad airport had suspended all operations for a few hours after the accident. Operations resumed only partially at the airport, while long-haul international flights remained suspended.
N. Chandrasekaran, chairman of the Tata Group and Air India, announced a compensation of INR 10 million for the next of kin of the deceased in the crash and promised help to those injured. He also announced that the company will help in rebuilding the hostel facility at BJ Medical College. End
Reported by Sunil Raghu
Edited by Tanimna Banerjee
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