One day too late: Missed flight becomes final departure
Ahmedabad: For Anil Kumar Vyas, a retired civil engineer from Rajasthan, the weight of one day's difference will haunt him forever. His daughter, Dr Komi Vyas, her husband Dr Pratik Joshi, and their three children — eight-year-old Mariah and five-year-old twins, Pratyut and Nakul — were killed in the Air India Flight 171 crash in Ahmedabad on June 12.
The family had initially planned to fly to the UK a day earlier, on June 11, but failed to get tickets.
"So, they booked for the next day. Just a day's difference. And now, my whole family is gone," he said.
After the crash, Vyas travelled to Ahmedabad to identify the bodies. He was able to identify his daughter by her earrings and clothing at the Civil Post Mortem Room. Komi's sister flew in from Berlin to provide a DNA sample alongside her father, which was matched on June 17, when the bodies were released to the family.
Their last rites were performed the same day.
"Everything changed in a day," Vyas said. "A lifetime of dreams lost — just because of one day."
The Joshi-Vyas family had been preparing for a new life abroad. Pratik and Komi were doctors who had recently cleared the Fellowship of the Royal College of Anaesthetists (FRCA) exam, qualifying them to practice medicine in the UK.
Pratik, a radiologist formerly with Zydus Hospital, had already started working at Royal Derby Hospital in Derby, UK. Komi, who had resigned from her post as an assistant professor and pathologist at Pacific Medical College and Hospital in Udaipur, was set to join him permanently with the children. Pratik had flown back to Ahmedabad on June 9 to accompany his wife and children as they embarked on this next chapter together.
Instead, what was meant to be a shared step into a promising new chapter became a devastating full stop.
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