Among the many rescuers who worked round the clock after last year’s Air India A-I 171 crash, at least three responders found themselves confronting a tragedy that echoed with the experiences of their close family members.Ahmedabad Fire and Emergency Services divisional officer Kaizad Dastoor, police inspector DB Basiya, and GVK-EMRI Emergency Ambulance Service supervisor Satinder Singh Sandhu had mere seconds to process the scale of the tragedy, which claimed 260 lives, before leading their personnel into a crisis the likes of which the city had last seen over three decades ago.Sandhu, 45, manages 20 ambulances for GVK-EMRI, a not-for-profit, in the city. On June 12 last year, while still at lunch at his workplace, the 1,200-bed Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, he heard an explosion and rushed out of the building to see fire and smoke engulfing the skies, barely 200 metres away.Inspector Basiya had just completed a monthly crime conference meeting at the city Police Commissioner’s office. He and sub-inspector R M Chavda were headed to Meghaninagar police station when both of their phones kept ringing incessantly. On the other end were their colleagues who witnessed the massive explosion from the police station’s terrace.Dastoor, divisional fire officer, was in his office at the Navrangpura fire station when he got the call.However, none of them believed that a passenger aircraft could crash in the middle of Ahmedabad. Such a thing had not happened since 1988, when Indian Airlines Flight 113 crashed into the still under-construction Kotarpur Water Works while approaching the city airport on October 19, 1988, killing 133 of the 135 people on board.Beyond beliefSandhu, who hails from Punjab, was the “very first responder” because of his proximity to the crash site. He was also the one who noticed Vishwas Kumar Ramesh, the lone survivor from the aircraft, walking out of the IGP compound “in a daze”. Sandhu claimed to have stopped him from going back to the burning aircraft and then dispatched Ramesh to a hospital.Story continues below this ad“On the day of the incident, my family was on a train to Gujarat from Punjab. They wanted to visit me for summer vacation. I called my wife and told her not to worry and that I would call her back later. I managed to do so only around 5 am on June 13 (the day after the incident). My family reached Ahmedabad around 3 pm that day. They were in disbelief about what had happened. It was only later that I realised that the man (Vishwas Kumar Ramesh) I had literally forced into an ambulance was the only survivor of the plane crash.”As his driver took a turn from the SRPF Ghoda Camp, the first thing Basiya saw was the right wing of the Boeing 787-8 embedded in the compound wall of the National Institute of Occupational Health (ICMR-NIOH). “After taking a turn around the corner of the hostel compound, we saw the right wing (of the plane) on the road. It was burning, and next to it was a body so severely charred…unrecognisable.”As the station house officer (SHO) of the jurisdictional police station, Basiya took control of the crash site, requested reinforcements, and enforced a perimeter and a green corridor. Senior officials, including then city Police Commissioner and now DGP G S Malik, also reached the site.Dastoor and other firefighters could reach the spot around 20 minutes after the crash. A crowd that had gathered at the site meant it was difficult for the large firetrucks to navigate to the site.Story continues below this adDastoor led one of the teams into the hostel buildings to rescue several doctors and medical students caught in the disaster. “The fire was so massive and intense. You couldn’t see anything beyond. It was only after some of it had been doused that the scale of the tragedy became apparent by the size of the debris field,” he said.A terrifying thought“My son Rajat was then a second-year MBBS student at BJ Medical College. His lunch timing at the mess was between 12:30 pm and 1:30 pm,” said Inspector Basiya. The aircraft crashed into the college’s hostel buildings at 1:38 pm. It was then that PSI Chavda told Basiya that the mess hall that had the aircraft’s tail embedded in it was where Rajat would have gone for lunch.“While leaving for work around 7 am (on June 12), I casually remarked to Rajat about his education and why he had been at home for two days and not in his hostel. He told me that his exams were beginning on June 16 and that he would go back to the hostel later that day. That conversation hit me when PSI Chavda told me that Rajat usually dines at the same mess. And my heart skipped a beat. It was I who had told him that he should go back to his hostel.”“But the terrifying possibility truly hit me when I called my wife. The implications of Rajat being at the hostel that was completely on fire came rushing at the same time. So, I cut the call to my wife, and dialled Rajat instead,” said Basiya.Story continues below this adTime seemed to slow down for the inspector as he described, in vivid detail, what happened then. “Rajat picked up the call at the tenth ring, and, from his voice, it didn’t feel like he was in danger. He told me he was still at home and was just leaving for the hostel. I asked him to stay put and called my wife again to confirm that he was at home. Once she confirmed it, I told her to ensure that he remained there.”Rajat lost several of his friends to the tragedy. A year after the incident, the father and son are still trying to move on from the shock.Inspector Basiya is also connected to another mass casualty event. His younger brother, ACP BB Basiya, who is posted in the Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) of Rajkot City Police, investigated the TRP Game Zone Fire in Rajkot on May 25, 2024, which claimed 27 lives.Also Read | A year later, AI171 crash lives on — in memories and questionsThe annals of another tragedy“Is it wrong to say that I was somewhat prepared for what I was to experience at the crash site?” asked Kaizad Dastoor, who grew up hearing about major disasters, one of which was similar to the one he faced on June 12.Story continues below this adKaizad comes from a family of firefighters. Both his father MF Dastoor and grandfather FA Dastoor have served as chief fire officers of Ahmedabad City. Both men were among the first responders at the time of the 1988 plane crash, with the elder Dastoor leading the operations as CFO when the younger Dastoor was a new recruit.“My grandfather told me about the 1988 crash before I went to college. My father told me about it when I was training for my sub-officer’s course in 2014. The training of our batch was conducted at the Kotarpur Water Works, the site of the 1988 crash. There is a memorial there (at Kotarpur), and we used to take a tour of the premises, and that is how we struck up the conversation about the previous plane crash. Some veteran firefighters also told us about the 1988 incident. We also studied about aircraft rescue in the course. I had never thought that I would be using that education one day.”After his retirement as the CFO of Ahmedabad City, MF Dastoor currently serves as the director of Fire and Emergency Services in the Union Territory of Daman. He visited the crash site with a delegation of officials as several residents of the UT were among those who lost their lives that day.Wounds of a warSandhu’s father, Kashmir Singh Sandhu, who joined the Indian Army in 1969, is a veteran of the 1971 India-Pakistan war. He suffered an injury due to electrocution while patrolling in the Rajasthan sector. He saw many people die during the conflict and carries the wounds of the war to this day.Story continues below this ad“I discussed the incident with him (his father) three months after the crash when I went home. I have also discussed it with my wife and children, who had, anyway, seen a lot about it on social media already.”“I have never seen anything like the 2025 plane crash. I still think about how it might have happened whenever I pass through there (the crash site), which is almost every single day. I still visualise what happened that day. [The memories] are as if it happened yesterday,” said Sandhu, whose office is still where it was at the time of the crash, metres away from the burnt buildings.The aftermath“I think about how many more people could have died if the plane had crashed moments later. It could have crashed into the hospital, and I wouldn’t be standing here today. While I understand that thinking about the situation in retrospect is not helpful because there was nothing more we could have done there, these recollections also bring a sense of what we could have done differently in the moment. The explosion and the fire left us with no scope to do anything more than what we did that day,” said Sandhu.Dastoor said he had not discussed the tribulations of the crash site with anyone except his father and felt that the hardest part of it all was not the firefighting and rescue, but a feeling of helplessness when approached by a family member who had lost a loved one. “The hardest part for me was when family members asked for help in finding their relatives. But what could one do? Most of us were helpless because the bodies could not be identified.”Story continues below this adBasiya said that after confirming that his son was safe, he wasn’t able to speak to his family for nearly 72 hours and met them only when he went home after a week. “After a couple of days, my son came to the police station. I was so busy at the crash site that I told him that I would call back later. Later that day, after 72 hours since I last called my family, I finally spoke to them over a video call and assured them that I was alright.”Basiya said that initially, he did not speak to anyone about the incident except police officers, mediapersons and officials from other government departments. His friends and relatives understood the situation and refrained from bothering him about it.However, Basiya said he does think back sometimes. “I wonder if the plane had remained in the air for some more time, maybe it wouldn’t have crashed. I also sometimes shudder to think about what might have happened if the plane had crashed into a populated residential area…”Echoing the feelings of several first responders The Indian Express has spoken to since the day of the plane crash, Kaizad Dastoor said, “We are used to tragic incidents. We cannot let ourselves be affected by every tragedy or quantify which one is greater than the other. Our duty is to save as many people as possible, and the practical way to do so is to get on with the job. People often ask about what happened that day, but I don’t like to talk about it. It is better instead to learn from this incident and prepare for the next one, which hopefully never comes.”Story continues below this adThe autopsy of a catastrophe“In my line of work, we go to sites of fatal accidents, crimes, gas leaks and industrial accidents, but when I first saw the [AI 171] crash site…the scale of casualty was incomprehensible. It took us some time to gather our thoughts before we could get to work,” said P D Chaudhari, assistant director of Chemistry Division at FSL Ahmedabad, who led his team of six forensic experts at the crash site.Chaudhari was at the FSL office, a couple of hundred metres away from the BJMC’s Atulyam hostel campus in Asarwa, when he heard the explosion after the crash.And yet, his job did not begin until around two hours after the firefighters had doused the blaze from aviation turbine fuel burning at “700 degrees Celsius”.“I made a quick call to my family to tell them I was safe and that we wouldn’t be able to talk for the rest of the day. But since our office was very near the crash site, we were getting calls from other people worried about us.”“Our first task was to ensure the identification of disaster victims; the second was to gather evidence related to the cause of the incident,” said the senior forensics official.On the DNA profiling process and setting up the procedural chain, Chaudhari said: “Three sites were set up for DNA profiling. While the Directorate of Forensic Science (DFS) and Centre of Excellence in DNA Analysis at the National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU), both of which are in Gandhinagar, extracted and analysed DNA samples from the recovered bodies, Ahmedabad FSL’s DNA lab—which had become functional only months ago in March—analysed the blood samples of relatives.”The relatives’ blood samples were taken at the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital’s Kasauti Bhavan and sent to the FSL Ahmedabad office. The autopsies, dental examination, and DNA sample collection from victims began around 6 pm on June 12 and were mostly completed by 4:30 am on June 13. The samples were then dispatched to the DFS and NFSU in Gandhinagar.The 260th victim was identified as Anil Lalji Khimani, a resident of Bhuj, Kutch, on June 27. His body was handed over to his family on June 29.When asked about the FSL’s primary investigation of the case before it was taken over by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), Chaudhari said, “After the human remains were sent to the hospital, we focused on finding the cause of the incident. On June 13, we checked whether there was any other substance apart from aviation turbine fuel present at the site. We also gathered evidence to check whether any explosive material had been used. We then filed a report with the investigation officer.”“Before we moved on to recover the two black boxes, the AAIB team took over the investigation.”Looking back at the situation a year ago and the psychological impact the tragedy had on him, Chaudhari said, “Every day, so many flights fly over our office… But I notice all of them now.”Histories of their ownKaizad Dastoor, who led his team of fire brigade officials, belongs to a family of firefighters.Satinder Singh Sandhu, who manages 20 ambulances deployed at the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, says his father is a 1971 war veteran.D B Basiya, a police inspector who was among the first responders and whose younger brother investigated the TRP Game Zone Fire in Rajkot on May 25, 2024, which claimed 27 lives‘Matter of seconds…’The Atulyam hostels and medical college mess, where the Air India plane crashed last year, is surrounded by several government institutions such as ICMR-National Institute of Occupational Health (NIOH), Ghoda camp (equestrian training camp of the Gujarat police), Forensic Science Laboratory, the 1200-bed Ahmedabad Civil Hospital and Gujarat Housing Board (GHB) quarters.Gujarat Director General of Police (DGP) Gyanender Singh Malik, who was Ahmedabad City Police Commissioner at the time of the air crash, said, “I got a call from my wife who had seen a “ball of fire” and thought it was a blast. At the same time, I got a call from the police control room and I rushed to the site.”Once confirmed that it was a plane crash, the city police immediately created a “green corridor” for the movement of emergency vehicles to and from the crash site, he said.