Ahmedabad, Jun 20 (PTI) When Air India flight 171 crashed into a medical college campus shortly after taking off on June 12, Gujarat BJP MLA Dr Hasmukh Patel rushed to the post mortem centre of Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, just like he did in 1998 as a medical student after a similar crash.
The Amraiwadi MLA had rushed to the spot, where chaos prevailed following the horrific accident, and was then told that the bodies of the victims were being brought to the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital just 500 metres away.
The site of the crash is in Asarwa constituency, close to Amraiwadi here.
“It was a crisis situation when I reached the post mortem section of the Civil Hospital. For the next four to five hours, I started tag-marking the bodies, which was crucial to carry out further procedures,” Patel told PTI.
When relatives started pouring in the next day, he helped the relatives in identification of bodies and giving samples for DNA matching.
He recalled a similar incident in 1988 when an Indian Airlines flight from Mumbai (then Bombay) to Ahmedabad crashed, killing 133 persons.
Patel was a second-year student then at the BJMC, which incidentally was the site of the June 12 crash.
There was a shortage of staff, so few his classmates volunteered to assist, he recollected.
“The bodies were brunt beyond identification. We did the work of tag-marking the dead bodies, trying to put together body pieces strewn over due to the impact and initiate the post-mortem procedure and help the relatives in identification,” he said of the 1988 crash.
Patel, who went on to complete his MD in Pathology, described both the incidents as very heart-rendering.
After years of private practice and dabbling in politics, he won the Amraivadi assembly seat as a BJP candidate in 2022.
“I was a student in 1988. Now after the incident, it becomes my moral responsibility to be on the ground in the time of the crisis. Many of my classmates are now heads of different departments,” Patel said. PTI PR BNM
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