India plane crash victim had flown home to bury his father

By Sunil Kataria and Sudipto Ganguly

AHMEDABAD (Reuters) -Lawrence Christian had flown to India to bury his father. A fortnight later, his family is now waiting to bury him.

Christian, 30, worked in Britain and was one of the passengers on the Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner bound for London that crashed last week with 242 people on board, seconds after taking off from Ahmedabad.

"When he sat on the plane, he saw me over a video call and bid adieu," his mother Ravina told Reuters at her home in Ahmedabad, sobbing inconsolably as she sat with her daughter Rinal.

"The last thing he said was that he was switching off his phone and would call me after he lands."

All but one person on board was declared dead in the world's worst aviation disaster in a decade. Around 30 people died on the ground.

Ravina Christian lost her husband, Daniel, in May to heart-related complications, and their son was the only bread-winner in the family.

Christian's grandmother, Salvina Christian, said: “We have lost everything, the three of us have been left here. Our strength, our pride, everything has gone. We have lost the light of our home."

The family was waiting to receive Christian's remains.

Doctors in Ahmedabad's biggest government hospital have been relying on dental records and DNA samples to identify the dead.

Imitaz Ali Sayed is one of those people, waiting to hear if his brother Sayed Javed Ali, his brother's wife, six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter, have been identified.

The four were visiting India for a family Eid celebration and to visit their mother, and are presumed dead in the crash, but he says he still holds out hope that they might have survived.

"There is still hope inside. Anything is possible. It is the Almighty who decides if one lives or dies," he told Reuters outside the hospital.

(Reporting by Sunil Kataria and Sudipto Ganguly; Writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar; Editing by Alison Williams)