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Air India crash site in Ahmedabad still bears marks of devastation a year on
On June 12, 2025, just 32 seconds after AI-171 took off from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, it crashed into the area.
A year after the Air India Flight 171 crashed in an Ahmedabad neighbourhood, the crash site reflects a slow recovery. Today, the four Atulyam hostel buildings remain vacant and dark. Their walls are marked with soot, with cracked sections, broken windows and exposed concrete. Corridors stand empty and dark. Trees in the compound remain blackened, their branches bare. Grass and weeds have taken over the debris and sections of the compound appear undisturbed, as if left in the state they were after the crash.
The marks of devastation are still being unearthed. Ashaben Parmar, a local ragpicker, still finds fragments of the aircraft during her daily rounds. Standing near the most damaged hostel building, she pulls twisted pieces of aluminium from her sack. Outside the gate, a banner marks an upcoming June 12 prayer meeting for Akash Sureshbhai Patani, a teenager and son of a tea stall owner who was among those killed on the ground.
On June 12, 2025, just 32 seconds after AI-171 took off from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, it crashed into the area. Of the 260 people who died that afternoon, 19 were on the ground, while one passenger survived the crash.
The immediate horror of the disaster was witnessed by a scientist at the ICMR-National Institute of Occupational Health (NIOH). Alerted by a loud blast, he rushed up three flights of stairs. From the top, he saw the hostel complex next door engulfed in flames. Smoke covered the entire stretch opposite the building and debris lay scattered across the ground.
He came back down and went out of the gate. He saw a severed head on the ground and limbs were scattered across the campus. Most of those directly impacted were killed on the spot.
“There was a person on a motorbike who got caught in the crash. The impact was so severe that he and his bike were burnt together, and they were thrown over the wall and landed inside our campus,” said the scientist on condition of anonymity.
During the crash, one wing of the aircraft struck part of the ICMR-NIOH campus and damaged the structure, though no one inside the institute was injured.
Institute staff were among the first to join the rescue effort, with around 150 members stepping in within minutes. Gloves were distributed to those pulling survivors and bodies from the wreckage. Firefighters from the airport were the first to bring the blaze under control using CO2, according to the scientist.
Kishor Thakur, 43, a contractor living in Omkarnagar about 300 metres away, said he reached the site within 20 minutes. He found rescue teams trying to enter the area and guided them through internal access routes. He said he helped save three doctors and their families.
“There were cylinders in the hostel. We removed as many as we could as they were exploding and worsening the situation,” Thakur said.
The death toll on the ground would have been far worse if not for a clearing drive in the area several weeks prior. Both Thakur and Parmar recalled that slum dwellers had been cleared from the area a month earlier, moving at least 40 to 50 families away from the impact zone.
Parmar herself had been inside the campus minutes before the crash. She stepped away to a nearby water stall seconds before the aircraft came down. Those seconds, she said, saved her life.
The accident was followed by weeks of distress for those living nearby.
“We were fortunate that no one at the institute was injured even though a part of the aircraft struck one of our buildings, which did not suffer major damage. Staff quarters are close to the crash site and residents struggled in the days that followed. A yagnya was organised for those who died in the crash and for the well-being of families living in the staff quarters. For a long time, even the sound of aircraft flying overhead would unsettle people, and it took time for many to return to routine,” said Bhavesh Modi, director at ICMR-NIOH.
Air India has announced an interim compensation of ₹25 lakh for the families of each deceased victim, while the Tata Group announced an ex-gratia payment of ₹1 crore for the family of each person who died in the crash. The Gujarat government recently announced plans to demolish the buildings and rebuild the hostel complex at a cost of ₹103 crore, with ₹53 crore to be contributed by the Tata Group.
