Priyanka Tiwari
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Suspense crime, Digital Desk : Amid the large-scale chaos and grief of the Air India flight AI-171 disaster in Ahmedabad, a single family's personal tragedy highlights a horrifying twist of fate. Their loss was not for a passenger on the London-bound flight, but for a 13-year-old boy named Akash Patni, who had never even set foot on an airplane.
Akash died on the pavement where he slept, an innocent victim on the ground caught in the fiery aftermath of the crash.
His older brother, Kalpesh Patni, stood devastated outside the post-mortem room of Ahmedabad Civil Hospital on Thursday night, his cries a stark testament to the family's agony. Inside lay the charred remains of his younger brother, waiting for a DNA test to confirm his identity.
The Patni family’s life had recently taken a difficult turn. Evicted from their home, they had been forced to live on the street next to their small tea stall in the Meghaninagar area. This makeshift home was tragically located directly across from the BJ Medical College hostels, where the aircraft came crashing down.
When the plane disintegrated, it sent debris and flaming aviation fuel hurtling across the area, creating an inferno with temperatures reaching up to 700°C. Akash, who was asleep on the pavement, was engulfed in the blaze.
The disaster claimed the lives of at least 24 people on the ground, in addition to the 241 confirmed onboard fatalities. But for the Patni family, the global catastrophe was intensely personal.
Akash’s grandmother, Babiben Patni, held herself together to comfort Kalpesh, but her own words revealed the horror she witnessed. "He was sleeping on the road when the plane fell out of the sky," she recounted, her voice trembling. Then, in a heartbreaking whisper of Gujarati, she added, “Maaro kaanudo maari saame badi gayo.” (My dear little Krishna burned right in front of my eyes.)
Their dire situation had left them with no safe haven. “Akash was sleeping just across from our tea stall,” Babiben explained. “We had nowhere else to go. We were thrown out of our home a fortnight ago.”
The tragedy compounded when Akash’s mother, Sita Suresh Patni, made a heroic but futile attempt to save him. Hearing his screams from the tea stall, she ran toward the fire and tried desperately to douse the flames, suffering severe burns to the right side of her body in the process.
While the mother received medical attention, Akash's father, Suresh, faced the grim task of providing a blood sample for DNA matching—a sterile, procedural step in a situation filled with raw, overwhelming emotion. As he joined other grieving parents, the rest of his family prepared for a long, heartbreaking vigil, clinging to one another in their profound and unimaginable loss.
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