Brit survivor of Air India disaster tormented by nightmares where ‘everyone dies' and ‘won't speak' about horror crash
Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, walked away with cuts and chest injuries after the
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Vishwash Ramesh, the sole survivor of the Air India crash, posing for the first time since the disaster
Credit: Dan Charity
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Vishwash crawled through a hole in the wreckage and walked to an ambulance
Credit: Reuters
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Vishwash Ramesh is in a hospital a mile from where Air India flight 171 crashed
Credit: HT Photo
Despite being dubbed the "miracle man" and a "symbol of hope" in the country, the Brit still lies
His cousin Krunal Keshave, 24, from Leicester, says he manages to sleep, but not properly.
He told
'He remembers seeing everyone die in front of his eyes.'
Read more on Air India crash
Vishwash decided to stay in India to recover at his family home in Bucharwada hamlet in Diu, instead of going back to London or Leicester.
He had been sitting in seat 11A, next to an emergency exit, and managed to
His brother Ajay, 35, who was on the opposite side of the aisle in seat 11J, was among the 241 passengers who perished.
'He sees him [Ajay] everywhere,' said Keshave.
Most read in The Sun
'He speaks but he doesn't speak about the crash. His wife and his son [who is four] are there with him, supporting him.
Air India captain 'deliberately cut off fuel while staying eerily calm before crash
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'He is currently trying to have a normal life, but he is not going out too much.
'He is spending time at home with the family. He was living in the house in Diu with his brother before the crash.'
The miracle survivor
'Everything was visible in front of my eyes when the crash happened.
'I too thought that I was about to die, but then I opened my eyes and realised that I was still alive,' Vishwash said.
'It's a miracle I survived. I am OK physically but I feel terrible that I could not save Ajay.
'If we had been sat together we both might have survived. I tried to get two seats together but someone had already got one.'
The pair had been returning to Leicester after the end of the fishing season at their family business in Diu.
Their plan was simple: fly back to the UK on June 12 ahead of the monsoon. But the flight never made it.
Moments after takeoff from Ahmedabad airport, Flight AI171 lost altitude and smashed into a medical college hostel.
A total of 241 passengers and crew plus 19 people on the ground were killed in the tragedy, including 52 Brits.
The crash has become one of the deadliest involving British citizens in recent memory.
Investigators are now zeroing in on a chilling twist in the cockpit.
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Vishwash walked away from the disaster with just a few cuts and chest injuries
Credit: Twitter
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Thick black smoke rising from a residential area after Air India flight 171 crashed in Ahmedabad on June 12
Credit: AFP
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The tail of Air India flight 171 after it crashed in a residential area near the airport
Credit: AFP
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Vishwash, left, and his brother Ajaykumar Ramesh, 35, had been in India on a business trip
According to flight data reviewed by US investigators, captain Sumeet Sabharwal, 56, may have
A preliminary summary of the black-box recording reportedly captures co-pilot Clive Kunder asking, 'Why did you cut off?', to which Sabharwal eerily replies, 'I didn't.'
But the switches were flipped off one second apart and then turned back on ten seconds later — too late to restart the engines.
It comes after reports the captain
In Vishwash's case, surviving has become its own form of torment.
'He feels guilty that he is the only one to have lived when everybody else, including his brother, died. It's a lot to live with,' another relative told The Sunday Times.
Key findings of Air India preliminary crash report
Dual engine shutdown
- fuel cutoff switches moved from 'RUN' to 'CUTOFF'
Confusion between pilots
- cockpit audio confirms one pilot asked 'why did you cut off', the other replied 'I didn't'
RAT deployed
- as seen in CCTV footage before the crash, the ram air turbine (RAT) which acts as a backup power source in case of emergencies had deployed
Engine relight attempted
- fuel switches were found returned to 'RUN' at crash site
32 seconds -
the time the
aircraft was airborne before it crashed
Thrust levers mismatch
- Thrust levers found at idle but black box data shows takeoff thrust was still engaged
Fuel test pass
- fuel was clean without any contamination
Normal take-off set-up
- Flaps and landing gear correctly configured
No bird activity
- clear skies, good visibility, light winds
Pilot credentials clear
- both medically fit and rested
No sabotage detected
- although FAA alerted over a known fuel switch vulnerability not checked by Air India
Aircraft loading -
the flight was within weight and balance limits
After escaping the burning wreckage, Vishwash reportedly
'My family member is in there, my brother and he's burning to death. I have to save him,' he pleaded with emergency workers.
Rescuer Satinder Singh Sandhu recalled: 'He was very disoriented and shocked and was limping.
'There was also blood on his face, but he was able to speak.
'He told the paramedics that he was flying to London when the plane fell and that he wanted to go back to save his family.'
Doctors who treated him at Ahmedabad's Civil Hospital said he was stable despite his physical wounds.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited him during his five-day stay in hospital before he was discharged and returned home.
Vishwash has since returned to the family's coastal village of Diu, where he is trying to recover with the support of his wife Hiral, their young son, and his extended family.
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India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) meeting with Vishwash Kumar Ramesh at a hospital in Ahmedabad
Credit: AFP
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The Sun the met Vishwash at his family home in the coastal village of Diu
Credit: Dan Charity
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Tuam historian Catherine Corless whose painstaking research work brought news of the children's mass grave in Tuam to the world's attention () Toni, who has been at the centre of locating remains in Milltown Cemetery of children from mother and baby homes in Northern Ireland, met with Galway historian Catherine Corless, whose discovery of 796 death certificates uncovered the Tuam scandal. There were no burial records for the dead children, but an incident in the 1970s, when local woman Mary Moriarty fell into the tunnel following the discovery of infant bones by two young boys, confirmed there were remains underground. 'It's absolutely macabre,' says Toni. 'When Mary Moriarty fell into the tunnel she said it was like a scene from Indiana Jones. There were bones everywhere. 'On the shelves there were bundles of what looked like dirty rags. They were using this place like a crypt. 'What you potentially have are individual babies wrapped in cloth and they just stacked them. 'The bones on the floor were indicators of uncoffined burials and rodent activity.' The expert says the painstaking work could uncover more remains. A sample of bones taken from the former site of the St Mary's mother and baby home run by the Bon Secours sisters was of a seven-and-a-half-month-old fetus which would not have had a birth certificate, and therefore no corresponding death certificate to find and include with the 796. But it could also uncover fewer remains, pointing to a child trafficking operation where unmarried mothers who had been banished to the homes to have their babies were told their children had died. The Tuam home operated from 1925 until 1961. Campaigner Toni Maguire. News in 90 Seconds - July 26th 'There is the potential for that,' says Toni. 'If they say 1,000 babies died, and I'm only finding 750, where are the other 250? 'If you were a young mum who came back looking for your baby and you're told it had died you stop looking. One inspector's report for Mother and Baby Homes in the south said babies had a better chance in a hedgerow than in a mother and baby home, but is that the case or was the high death rate a potential cover for babies being adopted elsewhere?' Toni, who has given evidence to a Stormont committee as part of the upcoming inquiry into Northern Ireland's mother and baby homes scandal, which involved more than 10,000 women and girls, says there was widespread movement of pregnant women from south to north to have their babies. 'Babies born in the north were British citizens entitled to birth certificates and passports. In the south illegitimate babies were not entitled to all their documentation. 'Moving people across different legal jurisdictions makes it easier to lose track of them for the purpose of anyone looking for them later. 'They can say there is no record of your birth, because there wouldn't be. That baby was born in a different country.' She got copies of the baptism register for the Marianvale home in Newry which showed mothers were from Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork, from Derry and from England. 'One entry in the book said this baby is going to be recorded in the Diocese of Cincinnati. It wasn't going to be recorded as a British citizen. It was going to be moved to America and recorded there. 'It was potentially people trafficking.' The expert says remains recovered from the Tuam site could reveal the cause of death among the hundreds of infants. Children in mother and baby homes, north and south, had a much higher death rate than in the general population. 'If you look at a lot of the death certificates there are a disproportionate number which record marasmus, which is malnutrition. 'Inspectors who visited these home said the children were emaciated. 'The evidence from the bones themselves will depend on the state of preservation.' After the scandal of the Tuam babies broke, the Bon Secours sisters acknowledged the order had failed to protect the 'inherent dignity' of the women and children in the home, and in 2021 Taoiseach Micheál Martin apologised on behalf of the state. Toni, who helped secure historian Catherine's first meeting with Galway County Council, says it also bears responsibility for Tuam. 'I stated at that first meeting with Galway Council this is Catherine's research and I'm not here to step on her toes, however I did mention to them that private cemetery status doesn't apply to Tuam because the Bon Secours sisters didn't own Tuam, they only leased it. 'Theoretically Galway County Council's duty was to ensure any burials complied with regulations at that time.' Following her work at Milltown Cemetery, Toni is backing an Alliance bill at Stormont to bring all of Northern Ireland's private cemeteries including those attached to institutions under the same regulations as public graveyards by removing private cemetery status.
