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Ahmedabad, India Sita Patni lives in a small room in her first-floor apartment in Meghani Nagar, a suburb of the western city of Ahmedabad in India.
Her right hand, waist and legs are all burnt and stained with burns, proof that a mother is trying to save her child. When he hears jumbo planes landing or taking off from the city’s airport near the area, he lowers his face to hide his tears.
On June 12, 2025, Patni was at her tea stall near the medical college hostel. Her husband, Suresh – an autorickshaw driver – was at work. Her youngest son, Aakash, often visited his mother at her restaurant to serve lunch and return home. That day, he insisted on sleeping under the roof of his house.
“I want to sleep here today,” he told his mother when she asked why he wasn’t going home.
This was the last memory of 14-year-old Aakash. At 1:39pm, a huge explosion knocked him away from his shop. As his mind pondered what was happening, he saw a fire engulfing the tea shop. He screamed.
“Koi maara chokra ne juo, are maaro Aakash ahinya suto hato (Someone please find my son, my son was sleeping there),” he shouted, running towards the flames, burning him.
London-bound Air India Flight 171 crashed into a hostel near his shop shortly after take-off, and a burning wing landed on the shop where Aakash was sleeping. They were told that Aakash had gone to the hospital and was recovering, but after 20 days they came to know that he had actually died that day. In total, 259 people died as a result of the accident – 241 of those on board, and 18 on the ground.
Aakash means heaven in Hindi and Gujarati, the Patni 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, cheer and shake. Now, the plane is a painful reminder of the scars the neighborhood carries a year later.
The lottery of death
About 150km from Ahmedabad, Salim Patel is angry.
On June 11, 2025, the couple is celebrating. Patel’s son Sahil, 25, had won the visa lottery. He was one of 3,000 Indians randomly selected to have a two-year visa to the United Kingdom, under the British government’s India Young Professionals Scheme.
For Sahil, it was shooting life in London. For his middle-class family, it was the way to the top.
But Sahil was one of the passengers on the Air India flight. “His lottery visa would have changed our future for the better,” said Patel, recalling the family’s emotional turmoil last year. I did not know that the visa that gave us so much happiness was a death certificate.
Patel called for the death of those who caused the accident. He said: “Every year, hundreds of people die from man-made disasters, and the perpetrators are not punished. “They should be hanged; they are traitors to the country.”
An initial report issued several weeks after the crash by Indian aviation officials appeared to blame the pilot, but a final investigation into the crash has not been completed.
Patel believes the pilot was innocent, and the plane was at fault. He said that officials from Air India and Tata – the conglomerate that owns Air India and several international brands such as Jaguar Land Rover – came to his house after Sahil’s death.
They offered compensation, he said, but only if the family provided proof that Sahil had already been paid. Later, they asked for pictures of Sahil working in the office to consider compensation, Patel said.
Al Jazeera asked Air India for a comment on Patel’s comments but he did not respond.
Desperate at the prospect of receiving less compensation in India, the Patel family has sought help from a US law firm: they are one of about 120 families who have gone to one firm.
Death is banishment
In London, Muhammad Shethwala, 28, is dealing with grief and the threat of immediate deportation.
His wife, Sadika Tapeliwala, and daughter Fatima, flew 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, hoping for a miracle, and waited for nine days at the hospital where he boarded.
Sadika’s body was one of the last to be released by the hospital authorities. Then, the family was given her gold bracelet, and Fatima’s gold ring wrapped around the pink cloth she wore. “That was proof that he will go to eternity and will meet us in Jannah (Heaven),” he recalled.
He returned to the UK in July 2025 but became disillusioned. 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 studied MBA in the UK and later moved to London as a professional.
But after Sadika’s death, the UK government told Shethwala to pack his bags.
Shethwala has challenged the deportation order, spending nearly $15,000 on litigation so far. He asked Air India to help pay the bill but so far he has not received any help from the airline. Air India did not respond to Al Jazeera’s queries about Shethwala’s case at the time of going to press.
“I don’t want to stay in London forever – I came here for my wife; nothing else,” said Shethwala. He wants the UK government to grant him a short-term work visa or remove the charge of overstaying in his immigration records. Without this, he fears he will be banned from visiting any European country in the future.
“I don’t want that,” he said.
