11 hours ago
British survivor of Air India crash seen carrying brother's casket at funeral
The British survivor of the Air India plane crash attended the cremation of his brother, who was also on the ill-fated flight, in Ahmedabad on Wednesday.
Vishwas Kumar Ramesh, a 40-year-old businessman from Leicester, was returning to London on flight AI171 last week when it crashed into a medical college building shortly after taking off from the Ahmedabad airport in the western state of Gujarat.
His brother, Ajay, was one of the 241 people on board the Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane who died in the disaster. Mr Ramesh miraculously survived with relatively minor injuries after jumping out of an emergency exit next to his seat 11A.
Mr Ramesh was discharged from hospital on Tuesday evening, while his brother's remains were handed over to the family in the early hours of Wednesday following a DNA confirmation of his identity.
"Vishwas's family has already arrived here from the United Kingdom. Following his recovery, we gave discharge to Vishwas at 7.30pm on Tuesday and his brother's mortal remains were handed over to the family after a DNA match," said Dr Rakesh Joshi, medical superintendent of Ahmedabad Civil Hospital.
In a social media video, Mr Ramesh can be seen helping carry his brother's coffin to a cremation ground in the union territory of Daman and Diu, about 354km east of Ahmedabad.
The brothers were returning to the UK on the Air India flight after spending time with their family in Diu town. He told the Hindustan Times that his brother had been seated in a different row.
After the crash, a video showed Mr Ramesh walking out of the plane's wreckage with minor cuts to his face and shoulder. 'Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly,' he told local media.
'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.'
Mr Ramesh has a wife and son in the UK. Outside the family home in Leicester, his other brother, Nayan Kumar Ramesh, 27, said: 'We're all devastated and in a state of shock at the moment. Even though one of my brothers survived, my other one is missing."
Describing his deceased brother, he added: 'We would do everything together and go everywhere together. There are no words that can describe him as a human being. He's one of the nicest guys ever. You can ask anyone and they would all say the same thing.'
