Just let me find my little girl, mother: A man’s plea amid the rubble-OxBig News Network

As bulldozers cleared the rubble of the shattered BJ Medical College hostel and rescue workers wheeled away charred luggage, Thakore Prahladji and his sister Anita Ben stood behind the barricades, 50 metres away.

Under the unforgiving sun, their eyes burned, voices cracked and hope withered with every passing hour.

“My two-year-old daughter was here… and my mother. No one is telling me anything,” Prahladji pleaded, holding up a photo of his little girl on his phone.

At exactly 12.27 pm on Friday, their patience ran out. In a desperate attempt to get answers, Thakore and Anita tried to push through the barricades, hoping to enter the crash site themselves. But security officials held them back.

Cameras and microphones of reporters stationed there quickly turned towards the commotion, recording the anguish of two helpless siblings being denied the chance to search for their missing family. In a tragedy that claimed over 200 lives, Prahladji’s anguish represents the silent agony of families still waiting, not just for answers, but for names, for closure, for faces.

The Dreamliner, bound for London, slammed into the southern wing of the BJ Medical College doctors’ hostel in Ahmedabad on Thursday afternoon Officials confirmed five deaths on the ground, but many more may be trapped beneath the mangled remains of concrete and steel.

Prahladji’s 65-year-old mother, Sarla Ben, worked as a cook at the hostel’s undergraduate mess. His two-year-old daughter, Adhiya Ravi Kumar, often accompanied her grandmother to work, especially when her father was out delivering home-cooked tiffins.

“I spoke to maa around 1 pm, right after I delivered lunch. She said Adhiya was laughing and playing nearby,” he said, eyes misting. “That was the last time I heard her voice,” he added.

When he heard about the crash, he rushed to the scene — but was greeted only by sirens, barricades and chaos. Since then, he’s combed every ward in every hospital nearby, scanned every casualty list, searched every face behind bandages. Still, there’s been no word.

“I’ve begged the authorities to let me enter the building and check the mess area myself… but they won’t even listen,” he says, his voice choking. “They just keep saying, ‘wait’. But how long,” he asked.

At the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, where most of the victims’ remains are being brought for identification, families cluster together with photographs, clothing and scraps of hope —waiting as officials slowly begin the grim process of DNA matching. So far, only six bodies have been handed over to their families.

For Prahladji, every moment of silence feels like another loss. “I’m not asking for anything. Just let me search. Just let me find my little girl,” he said.

A hostel worker confirmed that a woman and kid have been missing since the crash. “We were making rotis at the time of the crash. We had no idea what was going on, we could only hear screams and see smoke. Three to four students died on the spot, and some others are in ICU. A woman and a two-year-old child have been missing since yesterday,” he added.