Heat of Air India crash hinders DNA identification, agonizing relatives

Coffins continue to arrive at the mortuary at Civil Hospital Ahmedabad, India, on Saturday, June 14, 2025. Indian authorities said they had found the flight data recorder of the plane that crashed on Thursday, killing hundreds of people, as teams at the site continued to sift through wreckage on Saturday. (Atul Loke/The New York Times)

By Suhasini Raj, Mujib Mashal and Pragati K.B.

The intensity of the flames from the crash of Air India Flight 171 has made the identification of passenger remains a mammoth task, medical officials in India said Sunday, as relatives of more than 200 victims waited outside a mortuary for a third day.

The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner was carrying 125,000 liters, or more than 33,000 gallons, of fuel when it crashed on Thursday, a full load for a nearly 10-hour flight from Ahmedabad to Gatwick Airport near London.

Senior health officials in Ahmedabad told a visiting delegation Saturday that initial findings indicated that temperatures at the crash site had reached 1,500 degrees Celsius, or 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, according to two people who attended the briefing. Such temperatures are more than enough to incinerate bodies.

H.P. Sanghvi, director of the forensic lab where most of the DNA samples are being sent, told the Indian news media that the damage to the bodies made collection and testing difficult.

“These high temperatures affect the DNA present in various parts of the body,” Sanghvi said. “This process is very complex.”

By Sunday evening, only 35 bodies had been handed over to relatives, among an overall official death toll of 270 from inside the plane and on the ground.

Eight of the bodies, mostly of people killed at the medical school campus where the plane crashed, were identified and released Friday. Others were given to relatives starting Saturday evening, when DNA results began coming in.

Among the victims identified through DNA tests by Sunday afternoon was Vijay Rupani, who served as the state of Gujarat’s top elected official until 2021, according to Harsh Sanghavi, the home minister in Gujarat, where Ahmedabad is the largest city.

Rajnish Patel, an official at the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, where most of the bodies lie in the mortuary, said hundreds of DNA samples collected from relatives had to be compared one by one with each of the remains.

“The sheer size of it is massive,” he said in an interview.

In a sign of the damaged state of the bodies, the remains released to family members Sunday were done so under tight security. Some family members said that officials had told them they were not allowed to open coffins, and that they had to move on with cremations and burials swiftly.

Only one passenger among the 242 on board survived by making a miraculous escape. While the relatives of the other 241 have been officially notified that their loved ones had died, closure has been made more difficult because family members are still left to wander the mortuary halls, uncertain when they will be able to receive whatever remains could be gathered.

For families of the dozens of victims who had been caught in the path of the doomed plane on the ground, the search is even more complicated. They are simply listed as missing.

Among them are Sarla Ben Thakur, 52, and Adhya, 2, the mother and daughter of Ravi Thakur.

The family made a living cooking and delivering lunch to those on the medical school campus. Thakur and his wife would leave Adhya and her 5-year-old brother, Madhav, in the kitchen with their grandmother, who did the cooking. A small swing had been set up for Adhya in a corner of the workspace.

Thakur, 32, said that Madhav had run outside to play before the plane struck the building, where his mother and daughter were inside.

He hasn’t found any trace of either of them.

“I looked for my mother and daughter all over, in nearby hospitals and police stations,” he said. “While I was asking around, some doctors told me to go give my DNA. And then yesterday I filed a missing complaint also with the police.”

Thakur said medical officials had told him he would receive a call if his DNA matched any remains at the mortuary.

Also searching for clues is the Patni family, who ran a tea stall at the medical campus.

While the mother, Sitaben Patni, is receiving treatment for wounds and burns at a trauma center, the family has not been able to find her son Akash, 14.

Akash’s sister, Kajal, and brother, Kalpesh, have spent their days outside the mortuary.

“How can I eat when I know my brother is inside?” Kalpesh said. “This is my house until they give me my brother. It is hot, we are hungry, but I want my brother.”