Brit Vishwash Ramesh, feeling significant survivor’s guilt following his survival of the Air India plane crash said he believes he could have saved his brother’s life
The sole survivor of the deadly Air India plane crash has said he will “forever feel guilty” for not swapping seats with his brother who died in the horror crash.
Vishwash Ramesh was the only one of 242 passengers onboard the Gatwick-bound Flight 171 survive, but despite his incredible luck, Mr Ramesh has told friends he wishes he “was not alive” and believes his brother could have survived. The 40-year-old from Leicester was meant to land back in the UK with his brother, Ajaykumar Ramesh, 35, last week, but instead remains in India, where he helped lay his sibling to rest.
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Ajay was on the other side of the doomed Boeing 787 Dreamliner when it crashed, while Mr Ramesh escaped with cuts, scrapes and bruises after he crawled free from the wreckage via a hole in the fuselage.
Speaking to The Sun, Mr Ramesh has told how he now struggles with survivor’s guilt, believing he and Ajay might have survived if he hadn’t fought to ensure they were sat together at the time. The dad-of-one said he had tried to get two seats together, but the other he was hoping to get was already taken.
He said: “If we had been sat together we both might have survived. I tried to get two seats together but someone had already got one. Me and Ajay would have been sitting together.
“But I lost my brother in front of my eyes. So now I am constantly thinking ‘Why can’t I save my brother?’ It’s a miracle I survived. I am okay physically but I feel terrible that I could not save Ajay.”
The devastated dad-of-one added: “I wish I was not alive.” Vishwash is not due to return to the UK any day now, and is currently recovering at a family home in Diu, a small eastern Indian fishing village where he and his brother ran a two-boat fishing business they inherited from their dad.
The two were sat on row 11 of the Boeing Dreamliner when it took off, with Mr Ramesh taking seat 11A, and Ajay 11J. While Mr Ramesh miraculously survived, he did so only after seeing people die in front of him.
Speaking to Indian TV channel DD News India, he said he believed he was among the dead at first, and crawled free of the aircraft’s smouldering wreckage after he saw “an opening in the fuselage”. He said: “At first, I thought I was dead. Later, I realised I was still alive and saw an opening in the fuselage.
“I managed to unbuckle myself, used my leg to push through that opening and crawled out. I saw people dying in front of my eyes – the air hostesses, and two people I saw near me. I walked out of the rubble.”