Gujarat teen shot video to show friends planes flying overhead — the crash left him traumatised

Indian Express

a day ago

Standing on the terrace of a three-storey building where his father stayed, Aryan Asari watched with amazement as the planes flew by overhead, seemingly within touching distance.
Visiting his father in Ahmedabad's Laxminagar area, close to the airport, the Class 12 student decided to shoot a video of one of these planes and send it to his friends back home in a village in Aravalli district.
It was this very video — showing the Air India plane struggling to stay in the air and eventually crashing in a massive fireball — that would go viral globally, becoming the subject of analysis by everyone from crash experts to police.
Aryan, however, found himself traumatised and struggling to sleep at night. On Saturday, police took him away from the Ahmedabad house, both to seek details about the video and keep him out of the media spotlight.
Earlier in the day, Aryan told a local channel that he had shared the video with his father as well as on his Instagram account as a story. He said he was too scared to ever step foot on an airplane ever again.
Raj Singh, 16, who was with Aryan when he shot the video, said that this was the first time the boy and his sister were visiting the rented apartment where their father, a retired army officer who now worked as a metro supervisor, had been staying for the past six months.
'He came around noon and was amazed when he saw planes fly so close overhead as the area is in the flight path. The planes fly so close, one almost feels that one can touch it. I was also standing on the terrace and we got talking. He said he wanted to show his friends how close he was to the planes and started shooting them on his phone,' Raj, who resides in the same building, told The Indian Express.
'As soon as the Air India flight came, he started shooting it when the plane started going down. He asked me why it went down and assumed it would land. However, when we saw the ball of fire, he rushed back to his room. He did not go to the spot where the plane crashed, something most of us did,' said Raj.
Aryan later sent the video to his father who initially did not believe his account, said Sunita Singh, another building resident. She said: 'His father told him to stay indoors and not talk to anyone. The father may have shared the video which then went viral.'
'From early morning on Saturday, mediapersons started coming in even as the father was away at work. He returned and asked the media to leave. He told them their son was scared ever since the incident. Every time a plan passed by, which was every few minutes, he started panicking. He was hardly able to speak,' she said.
Later, a team from the Ahmedabad crime branch reached the spot and whisked him away. Police later clarified that they had not detained him but were simply getting details about the video.
When The Indian Express visited the building, the house was locked. An official said that Aryan and his sister had been sent to a relative's place as per instructions by senior officials.
Sunita said: 'We were used to flights passing by close overhead. Ever since the crash, every time we hear a plane go by, we get scared.'