After a week's search, family working in hostel mess cremates mother & 2-yr-old killed in Air India crash
'He got a call at 3 pm Wednesday saying his DNA samples had matched at the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital. We took possession of the bodies today and performed the last rites. The formalities were smooth. The family is doing okay,' Lala Prajapati, Thakor's friend who answered his phone Thursday afternoon, told ThePrint.
Thakor—whose family worked in the hostel mess of the BJ Medical College where an Ahmedabad-Mumbai Air India flight crashed within 2 minutes of takeoff on 12 June—performed the last rites for his mother, Sarlaben, and 2-year-old daughter, Adya in Ahmedabad Thursday.
Mumbai: After a week of frantically searching for his mother and daughter following the Air India crash, Ravi Thakor Thursday found some closure, though it wasn't the closure he had hoped for.
The Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed into BJ Medical College's hostel building in the Meghnaninagar neighbourhood, which is close to the airport. The flight was carrying 242 people, including 12 crew members. Only one, a British national of Indian origin, survived.
Thakor's family had been working in the hostel mess for 15 years. He and his wife, Lalita, would routinely make tiffin deliveries for doctors and MBBS students to the nearby Ahmedabad Civil Hospital complex. That fateful day, too, Thakor and his wife had stepped out to make tiffin deliveries.
His mother, Sarlaben, was cooking in the hostel mess kitchen, while his daughter, was taking an afternoon nap next to her grandmother. Thakor's 5-year-old son had finished eating and left the floor. He survived the crash.
By the time Thakor and his wife started making their way back to the hostel, they saw thick black smoke in the air and suspected there was a massive fire. The police stopped them just before the site and informed them about the plane crash.
Since that moment last Thursday afternoon, Thakor had been desperately searching for his mother and daughter, alternating between the crash site and the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital. He had told ThePrint he hoped that they had managed to escape through a staircase not far from the mess.
On Friday morning, he and his wife gave their blood samples in the hospital for a DNA test. When they didn't hear anything by Saturday evening, they even filed a missing persons report in Meghaninagar police station.
So far, the administration has found 211 DNA matches and handed over 189 bodies. While there is still no official record of the total number of deaths caused by the plane crash, the number is being pegged at about 270. Sixty-eight others were injured in the crash.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
Also read: Air India crash: Family supplying tiffin to medical college awaits news on missing kin, including 2-yr-old
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