When the call came from the police at 10pm, three days after Miten Patel’s mum Shobhanaben and dad Ashokbhai Vitthalbhai Patel’s bodies landed back in the UK after the fatal AI171 crash that killed 260 people, he thought it was just more paperwork. Instead, it was the beginning of a second nightmare.
“Your dad went through the CT scan first, and his entire scan was fine,” the officer told him. “But when they scanned your mum, they discovered there were other remains inside.”
Then came the warning that would sit like a stone in his chest for weeks: “We have to tell you this, but you must not tell anyone else.”
For three to four weeks, as the family prepared the funerals, he carried that secret alone.
“I didn’t tell my wife, I didn’t tell my brother. No one,” he recalls. “And I kept thinking: if my mum arrived in such a state and there was this much mishandling, is my mum actually complete or not?”
A mother’s body like 'a jigsaw puzzle'
The local coroner tried to offer a way back to dignity. She explained that anthropologists would have to take his mother apart and rebuild her.
“Now what we will do is separate the remains entirely,” she told him. “The anthropologists will perform DNA testing, and then they will map out the parts – just like our skeleton. They will piece everything together on a map, like a jigsaw puzzle. They will do that for your mum, and then for the other individual or individuals, because at that time, no one knew if there was one, two, or three people involved.”
For Miten, it was not just a technical exercise. It was religious.
“According to Hindu customs, we cannot perform final rites for someone else,” he says.
He agreed to the painstaking process on one condition: that when it was over, he could say goodbye properly.
“It took them about two to three weeks,” he remembers. “After that, she told me, ‘Okay, your mum has been separated now, and you are free to proceed with the cremation.’”
He made one more decision: his parents had died together; he would not separate them in death.
“They were brought together, they passed away together, and I brought them back together,” he says. “I didn’t want to cremate my dad first and then my mum later. We cremated them both together.”
Ashes in Narmada, under a briefly clear sky
By tradition, the ashes – the asthi – could not stay inside the family home. They remained with the funeral director, an hour’s drive away, while he tried to process what had happened.
“August passed, and in September, I thought, ‘No, this is wrong. My mum and dad shouldn’t be left there,’” he says.
His father had been clear 15 years earlier: “If something happens to me, first take me to my village Panetha, then immerse me in the Narmada at Chanod.”
So, he flew their ashes to Gujarat, tracked down his father’s maternal aunt in Panetha, stood outside the house where his father was born, and then drove on through heavy floods to Chanod.
People told him boats would not run.
“I said, ‘I cannot keep these ashes here indefinitely.’”
On the day they went, the sun came out. The water receded just enough.
“We performed the traditional prayers in Chanod with both sets of ashes,” he says. “We went to the Triveni Sangam and immersed both of them together.”
Only after fulfilling that promise did he fly back to London.
In Fingal’s case, he didn’t arrive at all
Miten later discovered that what happened to his mother was not an isolated incident but part of a wider pattern of mishandling.
“In my mum’s case, someone else’s remains came along with hers – but my mum was there too,” he said. “In Fingal’s case, Fingal didn’t arrive at all. They sent someone else entirely instead of him.”
The UK authorities sent only a DNA slide back to Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek’s family.
“Where Fingal actually is, nobody knows,” he says quietly. “Whether someone else performed his final rites or buried him, no one knows what happened to him.”
He is now in regular contact with Fingal’s sister, Arwen. Together, the two families wrote an open letter to the UK Foreign Secretary in last October, asking for answers from Indian authorities.
“We didn’t get any reply at first,” he says. “A month later they wrote back saying, ‘We will support you.’ But what we actually wanted was an explanation for how this happened in the first place.”
“Two spines and four arms”
Miten’s anger is sharpened by his professional background. Before joining his late father’s insurance advisory firm, he worked in quality control for pharmaceutical and clinical labs. He knows how traceability is supposed to work.
“When you handle traceability, if you bring remains from a site to a hospital, there is a log,” he explains. “If you take them from the log to a lab, there is a log. When you do DNA testing in the lab, there is a log. There should be a continuous log. The entire journey of that specific part should be documented somewhere.”
Months later, a response finally came – routed via the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office – from a Principal Secretary in Gujarat.
The Indian side suggested that the DNA analysis done in the UK had probably suffered from “contamination”, causing someone else’s identity to show up. They admitted it was “just a speculative explanation”.
Then they attached two new reports.
In them, his mother Shobhanaben’s head, upper limbs and left lower limb were suddenly marked as “missing”.
“In the post-mortem report they originally gave me, everything was included,” he says. “So how could they now give me a second report stating those parts were missing? We had already performed the cremation by then. When I read that, I received a massive shock.”
He says he could not bring himself to tell his younger brother.
“How could I tell him that our mum’s head wasn’t even there?”
When he took those reports back to the coroner in the UK, she was blunt.
“She told me, ‘No, that is absolutely wrong. I am telling you with 100% certainty, 100% your mum came back.’”
For him, that one sentence cut through six months of torment.
“So why did those authorities torture me like this for six months?” he asks. “It’s completely wrong.”
What the UK scans had found was not a contamination artefact but physical evidence: extra skeletal parts that could not belong to a single person.
“They found extra spines inside – and a human body only has one, right? They found two spines and four arms,” he says. “They are clearly in the wrong. How could they think, ‘We’ll just give him this explanation to quiet him down’?”
“Indian authorities are not accepting the remains back”
The coroner confirmed something else: the story was still incomplete for at least two other families.
“A male’s remains were found with my mum, and we sent his DNA analysis and palm prints to India,” he says, recounting her explanation. “In Fingal’s case, instead it was a female, and we sent her DNA analysis to the Indian government months ago.”
Months later, those extra remains were still in a UK mortuary.
“I asked, ‘Have they accepted the remains back?’ She said, ‘No.’ Both sets of remains have been sitting in the UK mortuary for nearly a year now. The Indian authorities are not accepting them back.”
“I humbly request the Indian authorities to reveal the identity of the ‘unknown’ man returned with my mother, so that his own family can be found and given the chance to decide his final rites with dignity.”
According to what he was told, Indian authorities have matched those DNA profiles but refuse to share the names with UK officials.
“They did provide one name for the lady found in Fingal’s casket,” he says. “But they haven’t provided the name for the male found with my mum.”
When he asked if anyone had contacted that man’s family, he was told no – because Indian authorities were citing “data protection”.
“What kind of data protection is it where you provide one name but withhold the other?” he asks. “And if it’s about data protection, the original DNA report I received a week after the crash had my mum’s name alongside the names of other people. Where was data protection back then?”
He later tracked down some of those families and obtained their reports.
“My mum’s name is printed on their report,” he says. “So how can they claim data protection now after making those blunders?”
The name of the woman whose remains were sent in Fingal’s casket, he says, is of Vasuben Narendrasinh Raj.
“They closed my grievance in one day – without a call”
When polite letters did not work, Miten tried the Indian government’s own digital grievance system.
“I found out about the PM Grievances Portal on the 19 May,” he says. “So, I signed up and submitted everything. I wrote: ‘I am requesting an investigation; my dad was a supporter of yours, and I would like to request that you open an investigation.’”
All his contact details were included.
No one called.
“On the 31 May, I checked the status,” he says. “They had already closed the case on the 20 May – the very next day. I didn’t receive a single phone call, not a single email. How can you just open it and close it right away? It means you are completely ignoring my request. That is entirely wrong.”
He has since sent a detailed rebuttal of the Gujarat official’s explanation, breaking their letter “paragraph by paragraph” and countering it with UK CT-scan evidence. He has copied in senior Indian officials, including the Prime Minister’s Office.
For now, he is still waiting.
“I have to move forward with my life as well; I am the eldest son,” he says. “I hold the responsibility for my family and my younger brother. But how do you move on when even your mother’s body has become a file in someone’s ‘closed’ column?”
“Let us grieve and wait for answers”
Krupali Patel, who lost her sister Monali and brother‑in‑law Sunny Patel in the crash, says what she wants most now is clarity, not speculation.
“We just want answers – to know what went wrong and what actually happened,” she says.
Her family’s experience in India was relatively smooth compared with others. “We claimed her body and were back in the UK with my sister and brother‑in‑law within a week,” she recalls. “I wouldn’t say the process in India was bad, but obviously there was the whole mix‑up with people’s remains. In our case, luckily, we were okay – but other families had to go through that.”
On support, she draws a sharp contrast. “Yes, there has been some compensation,” she acknowledges. “But in terms of mental health support, not so much from India. Once we got back to the UK there were loads of people involved and more help available.”
What hurts most now are the theories swirling around the tragedy. “It’s just the rumours,” she says. “People saying, ‘This is the reason, that is the reason.’ People are still grieving. We lost two members of our family; some people lost more. Just let us process and wait for the answers. Spreading rumours isn’t helping anyone.”
No money can replace them
“Air India has been offering cash settlements to families of victims if they waive their rights to file legal cases against the airline and its manufacturers."
One year after Air India Flight AI171 crashed moments after take-off from Ahmedabad, killing 260 people, Radhika Rupani has broken her family's silence.
Speaking exclusively to Asian Voice, the daughter of former Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani revealed that her family sent a private email to the chairman of Tata Sons expressing concern over compensation discussions taking place before the investigation into the disaster has been completed.
"In an email to Tata Sons' chairman, we have urged them to stop such efforts before the investigation is completed, and we know what has actually happened," she said.
The email remains private. The questions do not.
Twelve months after one of India's deadliest aviation disasters, the final investigation report remains unpublished. Families in India and the UK are still searching for answers. Some are questioning the circumstances surrounding compensation discussions. Others are struggling with the discovery of mixed remains and unresolved identification issues.
Praful Patel, a close friend of AI171 victim Panna Nagar said, “It has not been easy to live with or accept this past year. The pain of these months can only truly be understood by those who lost their loved ones on AI171. At times, we still find ourselves asking how this could even happen. We are still waiting for support from Air India, but that feels secondary – no amount of money can ever replace a human life.”
Panna Nagar was a respected head of schools in the UK, and she was deeply loved in Nar Gokuldham. Patel and Nagar friends for 22 years, ran a school together. He added, “We held a small remembrance for her and the others on the 12th, and again today on the 15th for children who could not come earlier. It was a very touching and emotional moment for all of us.”
Leicester’s first anniversary without them
In Leicester, the impact of AI171 is not an abstract headline but an empty chair at the table and familiar faces missing from the neighbourhood. Around 20 Leicester families were directly affected when the London-bound flight crashed shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad, killing 260 people, including 53 Britons. Only one passenger, Leicester resident Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, survived.
On June 13, one year and one day after the disaster, the city marked the anniversary with a memorial service at the Shree Hanuman Temple on Melton Road. Prayers were offered, Hanuman Chalisa was recited, and families gathered to remember those who never came home.
For many in Leicester’s Gujarati community, the gathering was not only about remembrance. It was also about the questions that remain unanswered. From Nar Gokuldham to Spinney Hills, families continue to ask for the same things: that the final report is published, that unidentified and mixed-up remains are returned to their families with dignity, and that those left behind in both India and the UK finally receive the answers they have been waiting a year to hear.
One year on, the questions remain
One year after the AI171 crash, thick files and official statements still do not answer the basic questions that families wake up with every day. They are not asking for complicated things. They want the truth about what went wrong, the dignity of proper last rites, and some sense that someone in power is really listening.
Their stories are different, but they share the same feeling: that 260 people died, and even in death some of them are still being treated like paperwork instead of people. Behind words like “preliminary report” and “data protection” are very simple, very painful facts – a mother’s missing head on a second report, an “unknown” man whose family has never been told, a school where a teacher’s chair is still empty.
So, the questions at this anniversary are not only about those 32 seconds after take-off in Ahmedabad. They are also about the year that followed. How long will mixed-up remains sit in a UK mortuary because no one in India will take responsibility? How long will families be told to be patient while rumours fill the silence? And when the final report finally comes, will it answer what these families are really asking – or will it be just one more document that talks about systems, but forgets the people left behind?