The Ahmedabad Plane Tragedy and the Lives We Lost Too Soon
Yesterday, India woke up to one of the most devastating air tragedies in recent memory. A London-bound Air India flight crashed just 33 seconds after takeoff from Ahmedabad, killing 241 of the 242 people on board. There are no right words in moments like these. Just an aching silence. A heavy grief. And a haunting realisation that behind the headlines and statistics were real people with real dreams, gone in an instant.
These were passengers with plans. Parents returning to their children. Couples reuniting. Families chasing a new beginning. What remains now are shattered families, unanswered questions, and lives torn apart without warning. Today, we remember not numbers, but names. Faces. Stories with unbearable pain.
Ranjitha Gopakumaran Nair: A Mother’s Flight Back to Her Family. Ranjitha, a 40-year-old nurse from Pathanamthitta, Kerala, was returning to the UK to continue building the dream life she had worked so hard for. A single mother of two, she had taken a short break to handle paperwork for a government job. She was also preparing for the housewarming of her newly built home next to her ancestral house. Instead of a warm welcome, her family now prepares for her funeral. Her children, Induchoodan and Rithika, and her mother, who is battling cancer, are left with a home that will never feel whole again.
The Joshi-Vyas Family: A New Beginning That Never Came. From Banswara, Rajasthan, came a family ready to begin a new chapter in London. Dr. Kaumi Vyas, her husband Pratik Joshi, and their three children, Miraya, and twins Pradyut and Nakul. A photo from the plane, now circulating across media, shows them smiling, hopeful, unaware it would be their last family photo. One moment of joy. One lifetime lost. A whole future erased.
Khushboo Kanwar: A Newlywed’s Journey Interrupted Khushboo Kanwar, a newlywed from Rajasthan’s Balotra, was on her way to join her husband, Dr. Vipul Singh Rajpurohit, in London. Married just in January, this was to be their new beginning. Her father proudly shared a video of her at the airport. “Khushboo beta going to London,” he wrote. Within hours, that joy turned to heartbreak. The young bride never arrived. A journey of dreams ended before it began.
Arjun Patolia: A Father’s Return That Never Happened Arjun Patolia, 38, had just lost his wife. He travelled from London to Amreli, Gujarat, to fulfil her final wish, immersion of her ashes in her native village. With a broken heart and the burden of grief, he boarded the return flight, looking forward to holding his two daughters again. They never got that hug. Both girls, aged four and eight, are now orphaned. One week. Two unimaginable losses.
This wasn’t just an accident. It was a catastrophic failure of machinery, yes, but also of trust. We cannot allow this tragedy to pass as just another news cycle. We owe it to Ranjitha, to the Joshi Vyas family, to Khushboo, to Arjun, and to every single soul on that flight, to remember them not as statistics, but as human stories that were cut short far too soon.
We owe their families answers. Why did a state-of-the-art aircraft fail so completely? What went wrong? How can we prevent this from ever happening again? Until we ask the hard questions, we risk turning tragedy into routine. Let us not normalise silence. Let us not bury accountability with the dead.
Because these were not just passengers. They were parents, daughters, sons, partners, and dreamers.
Let us honour them with our compassion, our attention, support and our demand for the truth.
