Ahmedabad : A man who gained access to the morgue where victims of the fiery Air India AI-171 crash were kept has revealed he witnessed scenes he can never unsee. The London-bound Air India flight, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, crashed into the hostel building of BJ Medical College in Ahmedabad within seconds of takeoff.
Romin Vohra’s aunt Yashmin, his brother Parvez killed in a plane crash. They were working for Amazon in London. Speaking to media, Vohra said he managed to gain entry into the mortuary because he had worked as a pathology lab assistant at Ahmedabad Civil Hospital during the Covid-19 pandemic and still knew people there. He hoped to identify the remains of his relatives. According to him, many of the bodies had been laid side by side on the floor.
He recalled seeing severed heads and limbs, a charred mother with her child still in her arms, and the skull of a little girl that he desperately tried to match with a photograph of his niece. Vohra claimed he saw the body of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, the pilot in command of the ill-fated flight, placed separately in a corner of the mortuary.
He was still in a sitting position, Vohra told. His back was burnt, but the front of his body was absolutely perfect. He said the captain’s white uniform shirt, complete with four gold stripes on the shoulders, dark tie and trousers, appeared intact. Even his shoes were still on. Vohra claimed the pilot remained clutching the aircraft’s double-handled yoke — the steering column used to control the plane — which may have broken off during impact or while rescuers removed him from the cockpit.
In its preliminary report released on July 12 last year, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau said the fuel supply to both engines was cut off within one second of each other shortly after takeoff, leading to confusion inside the cockpit. Captain Sabharwal’s family and pilot bodies, however, have strongly objected to the preliminary findings. His 88-year-old father, Pushkaraj Sabharwal, along with the Federation of Indian Pilots, approached the Supreme Court alleging the report was “profoundly flawed” and unfairly focused on pilots who were no longer alive to defend themselves.
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