Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a 40-year-old British national, has miraculously survived and is currently receiving treatment for his injuries at the Civil Hospital in Asarwa, Ahmedabad. Kumar came out as a lone survivor of the Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner crash on Thursday.
The Air India flight, which carried 242 people, including crew members, took off at 1:39 PM IST on Thursday before it crashed and erupted into flames.
Lone Survivor
Vishwas was returning to the UK with his brother, Ajay Kumar Ramesh (45), after a visit to family in Gujarat. He is the sole survivor of the London-bound flight crash that claimed the lives of all 241 other individuals on board, including former Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani.
Visuals circulating widely on social media showed Vishwash walking with immense difficulty towards an ambulance from the crash site. In the chaotic moments following the disaster, he can be heard informing the gathered crowd that a plane has crashed.
Speaking from his hospital bed in the general ward, Vishwash recounted the terrifying seconds that changed everything. “Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly,” he told the Hindustan Times. He sustained “impact injuries” to his chest, eyes, and feet.
Clutching his boarding pass, a chilling testament to his miraculous escape, Vishwash further elaborated on the horrific scene inside the wreckage. “When I got up, there were bodies all around me. I was scared. I stood up and ran. There were pieces of the plane all around me. Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to the hospital.”The Ahmedabad police have confirmed that all but one person perished in the catastrophic incident.