‘We Don’t Look at the Sky Anymore’: The Ground Victims Left Behind After the Air India Crash

Warning: This story contains details some readers may find distressing.

The photographs are the first thing Prahlod Thakur sees each morning. They hang on the bright green, peeling walls of his small Ahmedabad home, among religious icons, brass vessels and fading family portraits. One frame holds the face of his wife, Sarlaben. Another shows his granddaughter, Aadhya, smiling in a white dress.

Both were inside the BJ Medical College hostel complex when an Air India plane crashed into the building in June last year. Of the 260 people who died in the disaster, 241 were on the aircraft; 19 were killed on the ground. Sarlaben and Aadhya were among them.

A Year On: Grief That Remains

A year after the crash, the pain is still raw. "I just miss them," Thakur says. "I see the photos and feel like crying." Investigators are expected to publish a report on the crash soon, and much public attention has focused on the passengers and unanswered questions about the aircraft's final moments. In Ahmedabad, however, a different question persists: what becomes of a place and a community when disaster becomes part of daily life?

Thakur and his daughter hold up photographs of Sarlaben and Aadhya [Zoya Mateen]

Unlike many disaster sites whose scars fade, the damaged block of the BJ Medical College hostel stands like an open wound. Upper floors are ripped open to the sky; concrete hangs in jagged slabs; a staircase blackened by smoke disappears into darkness. Suitcases and clothes lie buried beneath dust, rubble and twisted metal.

Officials have approved plans to demolish the damaged complex and build a new hostel. For now the wreckage remains, and students walk past it on their way to lectures as aeroplanes rumble overhead every few minutes — a sound that for decades blended into the city's background noise. Since the crash, Thakur says, that sound carries a different meaning. "Whenever a plane passes by, we feel the same pain," he says. "We don't even look at the sky."

Lives Interrupted

For 15 years Thakur's family ran a tiffin service for doctors across the medical campus; their granddaughter spent much of her time there. Lunch was being served in the mess when the plane struck. Sarlaben was working; when Aadhya needed the washroom, she took the child upstairs. Moments later the building exploded.

Thakur, who had been working in another building, ran toward the smoke. He now remembers only fragments: the explosion, the heat, gas cylinders strewn across the kitchen, and his frantic calls of "Sarla, Sarla." For nearly a week the family searched hospitals, wards and relief camps across Ahmedabad, following rumours and asking the same questions. Six days later they found Sarlaben and Aadhya in a hospital mortuary.

(From left) Aditya with his friend Arjun and Arman at the crash site [Zoya Mateen]

"When I think of Aadhya I remember the biscuits I brought home," he says. "When I think of Sarlaben I remember a woman who spent her life feeding others. Everyone got along with her. She was a very good woman."

Survivors' Stories

Inside the mess that day, students' experiences diverged by minutes but not in the way the event lives with them. Arman Khan Pathan sat down for lunch when a deafening blast collapsed part of the building around him, pinning his legs beneath a table. As cylinders exploded and dust filled the room, rescuers were forced back by fresh fires. Trapped and struggling to breathe, Arman smashed a window with his bare fist. "It was pitch black," he recalls. "I was suffocating."

By the time rescue workers pulled Arman free, his friend Aditya Dayal had arrived. Together, with others, they carried him out on a mattress and into an ambulance. A year on, the two trainee doctors still recall the bodies brought in that afternoon. Many victims were so badly charred they were unrecognisable, and the smell remained long after. "It made me want to throw up," Aditya says.

Brijesh, who was riding a scooter to the mess with two friends when the plane struck, continues physiotherapy for burn injuries. He wears pressure garments despite Ahmedabad's heat and finds it difficult to turn the pages of a textbook. "It happened," he says. "What can be done?" Like many, he sometimes looks away when he passes the ruins, as if refusal might make them disappear.

Arman says that for many days after the crash, he would wake up screaming [Zoya Mateen]

Neighbourhood Aftermath

Residents living around the college had even less choice. Vijay, who was about 200 metres away when he heard the explosion, rode toward the campus and spent hours helping rescue efforts alongside firefighters and soldiers — carrying blankets, covering bodies and supporting survivors. "Wherever I look, there is fire," he says. "Someone's head, someone's hands." The images remain with him.

After the initial rescue and media attention subsided, the harder work of the aftermath began: treating injured survivors, identifying the dead, offering counselling, and trying to restore normal life. Much of that responsibility fell on Meenakshi Parikh, the college dean, who kept the institution functioning while managing overwhelming grief. She recalls many tragedies folded into one: parents searching for children, students recovering from injuries and families waiting for DNA results.

"My eyes are the DNA test," a grieving man told officials after losing three family members, insisting he would recognise them no matter their condition. Parikh says she understood why he felt that way.

Over time, routines returned: classes resumed, exams were held and new students arrived. As the first anniversary on 12 June approaches, the college has planned a prayer meeting, a blood donation drive and tree planting to remember those who died. But moving forward, the people affected say, is not the same as moving on. "There wasn't one moment when I felt I had processed it," Parikh says. "It was a gradual process of settling back into life."

Back at his home, Thakur often watches a short video recorded the day before the crash: Aadhya feeding her grandmother a morsel while Sarlaben smiles. Outside, another aircraft crosses the Ahmedabad sky. Thakur does not look up.