Air India plane crash: ‘We saw man coming out of gate… didn’t know he was a passenger’

Sandhu took Ramesh’s hand and guided him away from the site. A video of this has since been widely shared.

“I asked my team to deploy ambulances immediately while I rushed to the spot. When I got there, I realised this was a major incident. I called my head office and asked them to inform the police and send more ambulances. Meanwhile, five ambulances under my command reached the site,” Sandhu said.

The 44-year-old has been with the GVK-EMRI emergency ambulance service for a decade, and is a supervisor who controls 20 of the 120 ambulances in the city.

“I first saw the watchman of the hostel injured on the road. We picked him up and dispatched him in one of the ambulances. Then, we saw one man coming out of the gate next to the burning hostel building. I approached him, but he suddenly turned around and began walking back to the crash site,” Sandhu told The Indian Express, referring to Ramesh.

PM Modi talking to Vishwaskumar Ramesh, the sole survivor of Thursday’s Air India flight 171 crash. (ANI)

Sandhu said Ramesh initially resisted attempts to take him away from the site, repeatedly saying that his family member was burning in the fire.

“We thought it must be a family member inside the hostel building. We didn’t know at that time that he was a passenger who had come out of the burning aircraft,” said Sandhu, adding, “We finally managed to calm him down a little, seat him in one of the ambulances and send him to the hospital. He had injuries on his face, hands and legs. He had burn marks across his body, but he was able to walk with a slight limp.”

A chilling new video has emerged from the site of the devastating #AirIndia Flight AI-171 crash, showing Vishwash Kumar Ramesh — the sole survivor of the tragedy — walking away from the smouldering wreckage with smoke billowing behind him. The footage, now widely circulated… pic.twitter.com/n5gyEJsG9Y

— The Indian Express (@IndianExpress) June 16, 2025

It was en route to the hospital that Ramesh told paramedics he had been on the aircraft that had just crashed. He said he and his brother were going home to the UK and that he had been seated next to the emergency exit, in seat 11A. However, he did not know how he managed to exit the crashed aircraft.

Sandhu said Ramesh was in a state of shock and confusion after his ordeal. His mind was still fixed on a singular point — saving his younger brother, Ajay, from the burning plane.

Ajay was among the 241 people on board flight AI-171, and several others on the ground, to die in the crash. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner was carrying a total of 242 people.

Vishwaskumar Ramesh said the aircraft door was ripped open when the aircraft slammed into the building. (Screengrab)

Ramesh and his brother, who were originally from the Union Territory of Diu, were British nationals settled with their families in Leicester, England.

Sandhu said he and his fleet of ambulances were on the site of the crash by 1.41 pm, just three minutes after the crash that took place at 1.38 pm.

A firefighting team also arrived soon after and started the task of dousing the flames. It was when the heavy soot-laden smoke cleared that paramedics saw charred bodies of men, women and children strewn on the ground. There were also bodies inside the medical college hostel compound.

Sandhu was among the first to rush into the building to try and save anyone stuck in the rubble or stranded by the fire. He said he had no count of how many people his team managed to rescue from the hostel premises and the road in front of it, but estimated that it must have been at least 20-25.

Originally from Thaluh village in Punjab’s Rupnagar district, Sandhu has lived in Gujarat since 1992.