Ahmedabad: Ahmedabad-based Pinakin Shah and his wife Rupaben were all excited to go to the UK as their 30-year-old son Rushab recently bought a house in Scotland’s Glasgow city and organised a house-warming ceremony.
For them, their UK trip was also special for another reason as it was after a long time that the couple was going to spend time together with Rushab’s sister and her two daughters.
But all their plans were reduced to ashes as the couple was on board the ill-fated London-bound Air India flight that crashed in Ahmedabad on Thursday afternoon, killing 265 people, including 241 passengers.
Pinakin Shah, 62, worked as a manager at a box manufacturing company in Ahmedabad, while 58-year-old Rupaben was a homemaker.
Talking to the news agency, Utsav Shah, whose father is a brother of Pinakin Shah, said, “My uncles had gone to meet him (Pinakin) on Thursday morning. They greeted him (for his flight journey to London). As most of them are old, they just met him but did not drop him at the airport.”
Outside the airport, the Shah couple got their photograph clicked with both of them smiling, he said.
“Rushab had bought a new house (in Glasgow). The family was excited as his Kuwait-based sister Janaki and her two grandchildren were also going to be in the UK. Since Rushab and Janaki resided in two different countries, the coming together of the entire family was a rare occurrence,” Utsav said.
After the plane tragedy, Janaki came to India on Thursday night and gave her DNA samples for identification of bodies, while Rushab arrived early on Friday, he said.
“Rushab is traumatised and inconsolable. He is losing his senses because of the shock,” Utsav said.