Grief counsellors to be assigned to kin of Ahmedabad plane crash victims: Official

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat government will assign grief counsellors to the families of victims of the Ahmedabad Air India plane crash to deal with the mental trauma, a senior official has said.

As many as 230 teams have been formed to coordinate with families of the victims, Gujarat relief commissioner and revenue secretary Alok Pandey told reporters on Saturday.

In order to avoid any administrative problem, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation will issue a death certificate on the spot. The village patwari can then immediately issue a family relation card so that they do not face any inheritance issue, he said.

Teams have been formed and assigned to individual families with a rank of a deputy collector or tehsildar rank officer. Bodies will be handed over to the families and taken in ambulance to the village or district with a police pilot, Pandey said.

"A grief counsellor will be assigned to every family to deal with the mental trauma," Pandey said.

The official said contact has been established with the families of 11 foreign nationals.

Most of the foreigners killed in the plane crash are UK nationals.

"One entire team has been set up for the foreign nationals. We have contacted the Deputy British Consul General. Our deputy collector-rank officer is in touch with them. The MEA (Ministry of External Affairs), Air India are in touch with them," Pandey said.

All but one of the 242 passengers and crew on board the Boeing 787-8(AI171) and another 29 persons, including five MBBS students, on the ground were killed when the aircraft came down on Thursday moments after taking off from the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport before falling inside the nearby campus of the state-run BJ Medical College in Meghaninagar area and going up in flames.