Relatives wait for remains after Air India crash

AHMEDABAD, India: Indian health officials have begun handing relatives the bodies of their loved ones after one of the world´s worst plane crashes in decades, but most families were still waiting on Monday for the results of DNA testing.

Mourners have held funerals for some of the 279 people killed when the Air India jet crashed in the western city of Ahmedabad on Thursday, but others are facing an anguished wait. “They said it would take 48 hours. But it´s been four days and we haven´t received any response,” said Rinal Christian, 23, whose elder brother was a passenger on the jetliner.

There was one survivor out of 242 passengers and crew on board the London-bound plane when it slammed into a residential area of Ahmedabad, killing at least 38 people on the ground as well.

“My brother was the sole breadwinner of the family,” Christian said on Sunday. “So what happens next?” Among the latest victims identified was Vijay Rupani, a senior member of India´s ruling party and former chief minister of Gujarat state.

His flag-draped coffin was carried in Ahmedabad by soldiers, along with a portrait of the politician draped in a garland of flowers. Crowds gathered in a funeral procession for passenger Kinal Mistry in Anand district, a two-hour journey from Ahmedabad. The 24-year-old had postponed her flight, leaving her father Suresh Mistry agonising that “she would have been alive” if she had stuck to her original plan.