Since Thursday evening, Mr Jignesh and his family have been doing the rounds of the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad, trying to find details of his 22-year-old niece - one of the 242 passengers that died in an Air India plane crash earlier that day.

The death toll in the deadly Air India plane crash rose to 270 on Saturday, with families increasingly getting upset due to delays in handing over bodies which were badly charred in the tragedy in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad.

Indian aviation officials have confirmed that the final words of the pilot of the doomed Air India Flight 171, moments before the plane crashed into buildings near Ahmedabad ’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, were Mayday distress calls.