Vishwashkumar Ramesh, the sole known survivor among the 242 passengers on board an Air India flight that crashed in the northwestern city of Ahmedabad on Thursday, had been seated near an emergency exit of the London-bound flight and managed to jump out, police said.
Speaking from his hospital bed, the 40-year-old told Indian media that he was a British national and was travelling to Britain with his brother after visiting family in India.
"When I got up, there were bodies all around me. I was scared. I stood up and ran. There were pieces of the plane all around me. Someone grabbed hold of me and put me in an ambulance and brought me to the hospital," Ramesh told the Hindustan Times.
It was not clear whether Ramesh managed to jump out before the plane made impact.
Social media footage shown on Indian news channels showed a man in a bloodstained white t-shirt and dark pants limping on a street and being helped by a medic. The man had bruises on his face and a goatee beard, resembling photographs of Ramesh in the hospital after the crash that were published by local media.
A video on social media showed people gathering around the man and asking him where the other passengers were, to which he replied, "they're all inside."
A photo of Ramesh's boarding pass, shown online by the Hindustan Times, showed that he was seated in seat 11A of the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner bound for Gatwick Airport.
He told the paper his brother Ajay had been seated in a different row on the plane and asked for help to find him.
"He was near the emergency exit and managed to escape by jumping out the emergency door," said Vidhi Chaudhary, a senior police officer in Ahmedabad, speaking about Ramesh.
A member of Ramesh's family based in Britain, who requested anonymity, told Reuters over the phone that he had survived and that the family was in touch with him, but declined to share further details.
The survivor's brother, Nayan Kumar Ramesh, told the BBC: "He said, 'I have no idea how I exited the plane.'"
Ajay Valgi, a cousin of Ramesh who lives in Leicester, central England, told the BBC that Viswashkumar spoke by phone to confirm he was all right. "He only said that he was fine, nothing else," Valgi said.
Valgi said the family had not heard anything about his brother. "We're not doing well. We're all upset," he said.
Ramesh is married with one child, a boy, he added.
The aircraft came down in a residential area, crashing onto a medical college hostel outside the airport during lunch hour, in the world's worst aviation disaster in a decade. At least 260 people were killed in the crash. The dead included some on the ground.
Police said a previously shared death toll of 294 was wrong due to some double-counted body parts.
Police said Ramesh was the sole passenger known so far to have survived, but added that rescue operations were still ongoing.
"Chances are that there might be more survivors among the injured who are being treated in the hospital," Chaudhary said.
