‘The ceiling began to fall’: Medical student describes Air India plane crashing into hostel mess

Nineteen-year-old Dhruv Gujjar, an undergraduate student of Ahmedabad’s BJ Medical College, was having lunch on the ground floor of a mess in the college on Thursday, when he heard a loud crash.

He looked up to see portions of the ceiling falling down. He immediately hid under the table. After a few moments, he saw others fleeing the building.

“I ran out too,” Gujjar told Scroll. “When we came out, we realised that a plane had crashed on the roof.”

On Thursday, five minutes after Air India flight AI171 took off from Ahmedabad at 1.38 pm, it crashed down in Meghani Nagar, a densely populated residential area bordering Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International airport.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner was headed for London Gatwick. Of those on board, 169 were Indian nationals, 53 British, seven Portuguese and one was a Canadian national. So far, 204 bodies have been found at the crash site.

Gujjar, a second-year medical student at BJ Medical College and Civil Hospital, had walked into the mess at 1.30 pm along with three other students. “A few first-year students were sitting at a table next to ours,” he said.

The hostel mess for undergraduate students, a two-storey building, is part of a complex of several buildings housing students and faculty of BJ Medical...

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