Air India Flight 171 crash: Grieving families wait for justice a year later

Ahmedabad, India — Sita Patni sits in a small room in her first-floor home in Meghani Nagar, a residential neighbourhood in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad.

Her right hand, waist and both legs are charred and blackened from burns, evidence of a mother’s desperate and futile efforts to save her child. When she hears jumbo jets landing or taking off from the city’s airport right next to the locality, she lowers her face to hide her tears.

On June 12, 2025, Patni was at her tiny tea stall next to a medical college hostel. Her husband, Suresh — an autorickshaw driver — was at work. Her youngest son, Aakash, would usually visit his mother at her stall to deliver her lunch and then return home. That day, he insisted on taking a nap under the makeshift roof of her stall.

“I want to sleep here today,” he told his mother when she asked him why he wasn’t going home.

That was her last memory of 14-year-old Aakash. At 1:39pm, a loud explosion flung her away from her shop. As her mind processed what was happening, she saw a fireball engulf her tea stall. She screamed.

“Koi maara chokra ne juo, are maaro Aakash ahinya suto hato [Someone please look for my son, my son was sleeping there],” she shouted, running towards the flames, getting burned herself.

The London-bound Air India Flight 171 had crashed into the hostel near her stall soon after takeoff, and a burning wing had fallen on the shop where Aakash was sleeping. She was told Aakash had been taken to hospital and was recovering, but 20 days later learned that he had in fact died the same day. In all, 259 people died as a result of the crash — 241 of them on board, and 18 on the ground.

Aakash means sky in Hindi and Gujarati, Patni’s language. But it was a Boeing 787 Dreamliner that fell from the sky and killed him.

Before that day, the children of Meghani Nagar used to chase planes, cheering and waving. Now, the aircraft are a painful reminder of the scars the neighbourhood carries a year later.

Sita Patni lights an oil lamp in front of photos of her son Aakash, killed when the plane crashed near her tea stall in Ahmedabad, India [Marhaba Hilali/ Al Jazeera]

The lottery to death

Some 150km away from Ahmedabad, Salim Patel is angry.

On June 11, 2025, the family was celebrating. Patel’s 25-year-old son Sahil had won a visa lottery. He was one of 3,000 Indians chosen by a random ballot for a two-year United Kingdom work visa, under the British government’s India Young Professionals Scheme.

For Sahil, it was a shot at a life in London. For his middle-class family, it was a pathway to upward mobility.

But Sahil was among the passengers on board the Air India flight. “His lottery visa would have changed our destiny for better,” Patel said, recalling the family’s emotional tumult last year. “Little did I know that the visa that gave us utmost happiness was actually a death warrant. We lost a charming, obedient son.”

Patel called for the death penalty for those responsible for the crash. “Each year, hundreds of people die in man-made tragedies, and the perpetrators go unpunished,” he said. “They should be hanged; they are the real traitors to the country.”

A preliminary report issued weeks after the crash by Indian aviation authorities appeared to blame the pilot for the crash, but the final investigation into the incident is still not complete.

Patel believes that the pilot was innocent, and the plane was faulty. He said that officials from Air India and Tata — the conglomerate that owns Air India and several global brands such as Jaguar Land Rover — had come to his house after Sahil’s death.

They offered compensation, he said, but on condition that the family provide evidence that Sahil was already salaried. Later, they asked for photos of Sahil working in an office in order to consider compensation, Patel said.

Al Jazeera has sought a response from Air India to Patel’s allegations but has not received a reply.

Distraught over the prospect of receiving little compensation in India, Patel’s family has consulted a United States-based law firm for help: they are among at least 120 families to have approached the same firm.

A photo Sita Patni and her son Aakash in happier times, seen on a mobile phone [Marhaba Hilali/ Al Jazeera]

Death and deportation

Over in London, Muhammad Shethwala, 28, is grappling with grief and the threat of deportation at the same time.

His wife, Sadika Tapeliwala, and daughter Fatima had flown to India to attend a relative’s wedding. They were on their way back to London on the plane that crashed.

Shethwala was at his London office when he heard the news. He said he “refused to believe” they were dead. He rushed to Ahmedabad, prayed, hoped for a miracle, and waited for nine days at the hospital where passengers had been taken.

Sadika’s was one of the last bodies to be released by hospital authorities. Then, the family was handed her gold bangle, and Fatima’s gold earring wrapped in the pink frock she had been wearing. “That was the proof that they were gone forever and will only meet us in Jannah [Heaven],” he recalled.

He went back to the UK in July 2025 but slipped into depression. Then, in January 2026, he received deportation orders from the UK government. He was in the UK as a dependent on Sadika’s visa: his wife had pursued an MBA in the UK and had subsequently joined a London firm as a consultant.

But with Sadika dead, the UK government told Shethwala to pack his bags.

Shethwala has contested the deportation order, spending nearly $15,000 on legal proceedings so far. He asked Air India to help cover these costs but has so far received no support from the airline. Air India had not responded to Al Jazeera’s questions about Shethwala’s case at the time of publishing.

“I don’t want to live in London forever — I came here because of my wife; she is no more,” Shethwala said. He wants the UK government to either give him a short-term work visa or remove the accusation that he overstayed in the country from his immigration records. Without that, he fears he will be banned from visiting any European nation in the future.

“I don’t want that,” he said.