Cosmic Craze
The Briton, the sole survivor of Thursday’s Air India plane crash, said he managed to escape the wreckage through a hole in the fuselage.
“I managed to unbuckle my belt, push my foot through the hole and climb out,” Vishwashkumar Ramesh told Indian state media DD News.
Mr Ramesh, 40, was sitting in seat 11A on a Boeing 787 bound for London when it crashed in Ahmedabad, western India, shortly after takeoff on Thursday.
Air India said all other passengers and crew members had died – including 169 Indian citizens and 52 British citizens. More than 200 bodies have been recovered so far, but it is unclear how many were passengers and how many were on the ground.
Mr Ramesh said from his hospital bed that the lights inside the plane “started flashing” shortly after takeoff.
For five to ten seconds, he said, it looked as if the plane was “stuck in midair.”
“The lights started flashing green and white… suddenly it hit a building and exploded.”
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crashed into a building serving as accommodation for doctors at the Byramjee Jeejeebhoy Medical College and Civil Hospital.
But Mr Ramesh, from Leicester, said the part he was sitting in landed close to the ground and did not touch the building.
“When the door broke and I saw there was a place there, I tried to get out of there and I managed to do it.”
“No one could get out from the opposite side, which led to the wall, because it collapsed there.”
A video shared on social media shows Mr Ramesh walking towards an ambulance with smoke in the background.
He told Indian television that he could not believe he had made it out of the rubble alive.
“I saw people dying before my eyes – flight attendants and two people I saw near me,” he said.
“For a moment I felt like I was going to die too, but when I opened my eyes and looked around, I realized I was alive.”
Dr. Dhaval Gameti, who treated Mr. Ramesh, said he was “disoriented with multiple injuries all over his body” but appeared to be “out of danger.”
On Friday morning, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the scene of the accident before heading to the hospital, where he met the injured, including Mr Ramesh, and the families of the victims.
Ramesh’s brother Ajay was also on board the plane.
Their other brother, Nayan Kumar Ramesh, told BBC News from behind their family home in Leicester on Thursday: “When Vishwashkumar called us, he was more worried about Ajay… that’s all he cares about at the moment.”
Mr. Ramesh, a businessman who was born in India but has been living there since 2003 in Great Britain, He has a wife and a four-year-old son.