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.