Gandhinagar: A woman's severed hand with fingers locked as if seeking help. This image has been etched in the memory of the H P Sanghvi, director of the Gujarat Directorate of Forensic Sciences in Gandhinagar even one year after the AI-171 crash. He and his team of 38 forensic scientists were tasked into identifying bodies that were beyond recognition.
On June 12, 2025, a London-bound Air India flight crashed into a hostel complex seconds after taking off from Ahmedabad, killing 241 people on board and 19 on the ground. Only one passenger survived.
The DST team spent sleepless nights, going through the biological samples to identify the victims and examining the shattered electronic devices pulled out from the ashes to extract whatever information they could. At the end of 15 days, the forensic scientists had successfully identified 142 victims.
Sanghvi said that the image of the severed hand is still fresh in his memory. "It looked as if she was pleading for help. Even now, a year later, we can still imagine the terror of the woman in those final moments," said Sanghvi.
Sanghvi said he was informed about the Ahmedabad flight crash through a mobile message during a meeting at the DFS headquarters in Gandhinagar and subsequently a round-the-clock operation ensued.
The DST mobilised DNA experts from laboratories across the state and rushed to secure additional chemical analysis kits and backup machinery. The laboratory received over 180 biological samples, many of which were severely compromised due to extreme heat and rapid burning. It made the extraction of viable tissue a monumental challenge, he said.
"The first samples arrived after midnight, and our teams managed to generate 100 DNA profiles within the first 100 hours," he recalled.
The usable DNAs were isolated from the severely charred tissues that require a delicate, 30-step technical process. They sometimes found that the cellular structures were destroyed due to intense heat and they had to restart the process.
To expedite the DNA analysis process, blood samples from victims' relatives were processed using modern technology that can generate a genetic profile in just 90 minutes.
However, the absence of immediate kin came as a hurdle in DNA matching as a 100 percent match is needed to confirm identity. In some cases, extended relatives were only available for comparison and this made the matching process far more complex, Sanghvi explained.
11/06/2026 ETV Bharat
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