How Viswash Kumar Ramesh survived Air India crash that killed brother

Viswash Kumar Ramesh, the only known survivor out of the 242 people onboard an Air India plane that crashed in Ahmedabad on Thursday, had been sitting near an emergency exit of the London-bound flight and managed to jump out, police said. According family members and a copy of the passenger manifest, his brother Ajay Kumar Ramesh was also on the flight, but did not survive.

Speaking from his hospital bed, the 40-year-old told Indian media that he was a British national and was travelling to Britain with his brother after visiting family in India.

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"When I got up, there were bodies all around me. I was scared. I stood up and ran. There were pieces of the plane all around me. Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to the hospital," Viswashkumar told the Hindustan Times.

'Can't believe how I survived'

"Everything happened in front of me, and even I couldn't believe how I managed to come out alive from that," Ramesh said from his hospital bed on Friday, speaking in Hindi to national broadcaster DD News.

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"Within a minute after takeoff, suddenly... it felt like something got stuck... I realised something had happened, and then suddenly the plane's green and white lights turned on," Ramesh said.

"After that, the plane seemed to speed up, heading straight towards what turned out to be a hostel of a hospital. Everything was visible in front of my eyes when the crash happened."

Ramesh, aged 40, is from the British city of Leicester, according to Britain's Press Association news agency, which spoke with his family at home.

"Initially, I too thought that I was about to die, but then I opened my eyes and realised that I was still alive," he said.

"I saw the air hostess and aunties and uncles all in front of me," he said, his voice trailing off in emotion, using a term of respect used in India for older people.

"I unfastened my seatbelt and tried to escape, and I did," he said. 

"I think the side I was on was not facing the hostel," he added. "Where I landed was closer to the ground and there was space too – and when my door broke -- I saw that there was space, and I thought I could try to slip out."

"My left hand got slightly burnt due to the fire, but an ambulance brought me to the hospital," he said. "The people here are taking good care of me."

Seat 11A of the aircraft

Social media footage shown on Indian news channels showed Ramesh in a bloodstained white t-shirt and dark pants limping on a street and being helped by a medic.

A photo of his boarding pass shown online by the Hindustan Times showed that he was seated in seat 11A of the plane bound for Gatwick Airport.

He told the paper his brother Ajay had been seated in a different row on the plane and asked for help to find him.

"He was near the emergency exit and managed to escape by jumping out the emergency door," said Vidhi Chaudhary, a senior police officer in Ahmedabad, speaking about Viswashkumar.

A member of Viswashkumar's family based in Britain, who requested anonymity, told Reuters over the phone that he had survived and that the family was in touch with him, but declined to share further details.

Ajay Valgi, a cousin of Viswashkumar who lives in Leicester, central England, told the BBC that Viswashkumar spoke by phone to confirm he was all right. "He only said that he was fine, nothing else," Valgi said.

Valgi said the family had not heard anything about his brother. "We're not doing well. We're all upset," he said.

Viswashkumar is married with one child, a boy, he added.

The aircraft came down in a residential area, crashing onto a medical college hostel outside the airport during lunch hour, in the world's worst aviation disaster in a decade. More than 290 people were killed in the crash. The dead included some on the ground.

Police said Viswashkumar was the sole passenger known so far to have survived but added that rescue operations were still ongoing.

"Chances are that there might be more survivors among the injured who are being treated in the hospital," Chaudhary said. (Reporting by Shivam Patel in New Delhi; Additional reporting by Sachin Ravikumar in London and Sumit Khanna in Ahmedabad; Editing by Alison Williams)