Dr. Rajnish Patel, professor and head of surgery at Ahmedabad Civil Hospital in India has confirmed that the sole survivor of the deadly Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad is in a “not very critical” condition and could be released in the next couple of days.
The Hindustan Times named the survivor as a British national, Vishwash Kumar Ramesh.
Patel said Ramesh is, “well under management and not very critical. He has some blood in the images, but he’s not very badly injured. He is very comfortable and under strict observation, no issues.”
Asked what Ramesh recalled about the crash, Patel said he was possibly suffering “post-traumatic amnesia.”
“He must’ve suffered that. Like you know, he is not able to give me the complete picture of the event that happened sequentially. What he says is that at one moment there was a lot … there was some kind of noise. And the other moment he was out. And then when he got up, he was surrounded by dead bodies and all,” Patel said.
Patel said that Ramesh could be released from the hospital “within a day or two,” noting that there are some patient protocols and legal matters that need to be cleared beforehand.
Patel also said that the plane had crashed into a residential part of a medical school near the airport, specifically in the dining area.
Patel said that patients brought to the hospital following the crash, who had not been on board the plane, fitted into one of two categories. “Either they are dead,” or they suffered minor injuries, he said.
“We do not have many critical patients receiving who are still alive.”
A British member of parliament has spoken to the family of the sole survivor of the Air India flight, which crashed soon after taking off from the western city of Ahmedabad in India’s Gujarat state earlier today.
“It’s nothing short of a miracle. I have reached out to the family and I’m choosing to respect their privacy at this trying time. But as you may have picked up […] one of his brothers was also on that flight who sadly didn’t survive,” Shivani Raja, member of parliament for Leicester East, told CNN’s Max Foster on Thursday.
Police told Reuters that there was at least one survivor, who had been seated in seat 11A of the flight. The Hindustan Times named him as Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, a British national. Speaking from his hospital bed, the outlet quoted Ramesh saying: “Thirty seconds after takeoff, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly.”
Raja told CNN the survivor’s family lives in Leicester, in England’s Midlands, which has a large Gujarati population.
The flight route from Ahmedabad to London is “incredibly popular,” particularly in Leicester, the MP said. “I’ve used it personally many times. My family use it, my constituents use it. So this really did hit close to home, and as a result, the community and the people here in Leicester are left quite shaken up as you can imagine,” Raja added.
