Lone survivor lays brother to rest at emotional funeral

The British man who was the only survivor of the Air India airplane accident last week helped throw his brother to rest during funeral in western India.

Vishwashkumar Ramesh brother Ajay was also on unhappy flight but did not survive the tragedy.

A visibly upset rameshy was one of the carriers of the Pall who bore the coffin of his brother to the crematorium of the city of Diu, his arm and his face still covered with white bandages. He has spent most of the last five days in the hospital.

The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner to London crashed a few seconds after taking off Thursday from the city of western Ahmedabad. At least 270 people were killed, most of the passengers.

Mr. Ramesh’s mother walked with the coffin in a blue sari with other mourning people, while he was holding him on his right shoulder.

Several people in the city – who lost 14 other people because of the accident – came out for the funeral even though the rain hit the procession.

No one is clear how Mr. Ramesh managed to survive. He even tried to go back to the flamboyant plane to search for his brother, said one of the first stakeholders on the scene at the BBC.

In a new video that emerged earlier this week, ambulance driver Satinder Singh Sandhu is the man seen guided Mr. Ramesh towards safety while he leaves the accident site with flames and thick smoke that swings in the air behind him.

Mr. Sandhu, supervisor of emergency ambulance services in Ahmedabad, said that he had no idea who he helped, or that Mr. Ramesh had escaped the plane. He only discovered later on the news that man was the only survivor of the accident.

Vishwashkumar Ramesh, 40, was at 11A headquarters on the flight. His brother would have been seated a few seats.

All the other passengers and crews were killed and nearly 30 people also died on the ground after the plane took place and crashed into a doctor inn.

But Mr. Ramesh miraculously survived, managed to get out of the wreckage by opening in the fuselage.

The new video shows that Mr. Sandhu, who has a blue turban, is heading to Mr. Ramesh and guides him to security.

Mr. Sandhu said that he had lunch with his colleagues when he noticed a “solid fire with thick smoke rising in the sky”.

“At the beginning, we thought it could be a car accident or an explosion of gas cylinder. Soon, we learned that it was a plane crash. I immediately asked my team to bring an ambulance and I rushed to the site.”

Addressing the BBC Gujarati, Mr. Sandhu said he was just trying to do his job. During his career for several decades, he said that he had met many difficult situations.

But what surprised him that day was how Mr. Ramesh, after being rescued, continued to try to return to the accident site.

“He had no idea what he was doing. He continued to enter and get out of the complex. We told him to stop and trained him in an ambulance so that he could receive medical care,” Sandhu said.

“It was at this moment that he told me that his parent was trapped inside and that he wanted to go and save him. We didn’t say a word after that.”

Ramesh later said that DD News from India he was trying to get Ajay.

At the scene, Mr. Sandhu spotted a security guard who seemed to have been injured in the impact. His clothes were partially burned and Mr. Sandhu first helped her.

“I also saw a woman. She shouted a horror. Her son who led a tea stand had been killed in the accident.”

A few moments later, he saw Mr. Ramesh emerge from the accident site in a white shirt.

He had injuries on his face and burned on his arms and looked visibly upset, said Sandhu.

“At that time, we did not know who was the injured man. I thought he was one of the doctors who lived in college. Later, when we saw the news, we realized that he was the only survivor of the accident.”

Chirag, member of the ambulance team of Mr. Sandhu, told the PTI news agency that Mr. Ramesh said to someone during a video call that his relatives were on the accident site.

The first stakeholders treated him for his injuries and precipitated him at the trauma center of a nearby hospital.

In his interview with DD News, Mr. Ramesh said he couldn’t believe that he had come out of the living wreckage.

“For a while, I felt like I was going to die too, but when I opened my eyes and I looked around, I realized that I was alive.

“I still can’t believe how I survived. I got out of the rubble.”

The cause of the accident is not yet known. Managers try to decode the cockpit voice and flight data recorders – collectively known as Black Box – recovered from the wreck to reconstruct what happened.

Additional reports by Zoya Mateen in Delhi

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