India, June 14 -- He was neither on the ill-fated flight nor in the hostel building that the London-bound Air India jet rammed into on Thursday afternoon in Ahmedabad. But on Friday, 15-year-old Akash Patni, who was sleeping under a tree near his family's tea stall close to the BJ Medical College hostel, was confirmed to have been killed by the same tragedy that claimed about 260 other lives.

A day after the worst air crash in the country in three decades, forensic investigators combed through mangled pieces of metal and authorities struggled to confirm the identities of the masses of charred bodies heaped up inside the mortuary.

"The death toll based on the bodies recovered so far would be between 265 and 270," said Kanan Desai, deputy...