My brush with death aboard Pan Am Flight 103 is in new Netflix drama. But the shocking scenes from Lockerbie are just a half of the story... what I saw haunts me to this day

Six hours had passed since Surinder Basuta's father had called her in New York to share the terrible news.

'There has been a plane crash,' he told her from his London home. 'Your husband Jaswant was on it - we saw him off at Heathrow airport.'

Surinder was distraught but tried to keep calm for the sake of their teenage children, Inderjit, 14, and 19-year-old Jyoti. She and Jaswant had met and married in their native Kenya, moving to New York together to pursue the American Dream. Suddenly she was living a nightmare.

Then the phone rang again, with another call from London. This time it was the police, who told her: 'Jaswant is alive.'

'He said: We have news - good news and bad news,' recalled Jaswant, speaking to the Daily Mail from his home in upstate New York. 'She said: I know the bad news. He said: no, no, don't worry about it, there's good news. Your husband is alive.'

It is nearly 38 years since the awful night that Jaswant, who was 47 at the time, was supposed to be on Pan Am flight 103 from London Heathrow to New York's JFK airport. He had been at a family wedding in Belfast but Surinder, who had just started a new job, was unable to attend, leaving Jaswant to fly solo.

He was checked in and his suitcase was on board, but instead of passing security he went for a few beers in the airport with his brother-in-law and missed the flight. 'I ran through the airport,' he said. 'When I got there, the door was closed. I could see the plane standing there. I cursed myself. I said: "What the hell have I done?"'

Jaswant is not named in the new Netflix hit drama, The Bombing of Pan Am 103, but it opens with the scenes of him ambling off in search of an airport bar, only to run to the gate as the plane pulls back.

Thirty-eight minutes after take-off a bomb on the plane, planted by Libyan terrorists, exploded, killing all 259 people on board and 11 residents of the Scottish village of Lockerbie, 20 miles north of the English border.

To this day, the bombing which took place on December 21, 1988, is the worst ever terror attack on British soil. One hundred and ninety of those on board were US citizens making Lockerbie, as the disaster simply came to be known, the largest loss of American life to terrorism until 9/11.

Jaswant, a retired car mechanic, now 84, was supposed to be among them. The fact that he wasn't leaves him conflicted to this day.

'Even today, I still remember every passenger, the 270 people who died,' he said. 'We were supposed to die together. We were like a family.'

Does he really feel he should have died with them?

'Sometimes, you know,' he said. 'Either they should have taken me, or God should have kept them here on this side.

'You have a lot of mixed feelings. What connection did I have with them, that I left them, and they left?'

Fellow worshippers at the Sikh temple he attended in Queens told him it was God's will, saying: 'This is what God does. He held your arm. He didn't let you get on the plane; he held your arm.'

His brother-in-law Surjit, his Heathrow drinking buddy, told him it was a sign to 'enjoy life.' The pair had enthusiastically consumed four Carlsberg Special Brews, notoriously strong beers, before Jaswant made his run for the gate.

Jaswant was an immediate suspect in the bombing, as his suitcase was on board. He was arrested by Heathrow airport police and taken away for six hours of questioning during which he was unable to contact his family, who assumed he had boarded the flight and died.

'I asked if I could talk to someone in the US consulate,' he said. 'They found a number. I explained everything to them, everything. He said, "Don't worry." When the police heard my conversation, they eased up. They thought, "This guy is okay."'

As soon as he could, Jaswant rang his wife, and then his in-laws, who were gathered, sobbing. So convinced were they that he had died, that at first they could barely comprehend it was his voice they were hearing.

'I got so upset,' Jaswant recalled, remembering how he introduced himself by his family name of 'Jassy' only to be asked by the confused and distraught relative, 'Which Jassy?'

'How many Jassys do you have in the family?'

Perhaps for some such a close brush with death might prompt them to make major changes to their life. But not Jaswant. He lived a simple, decent life and saw no need to revise his priorities or values.

Nor did he worry about flying – indeed, he flew back to New York, five or so days after the disaster, on a Pan Am flight.

'Everybody said: "Don't fly Pan Am." I said, "What's wrong with the aircraft? Was it a bad aircraft, a defective one? Somebody destroyed it. What's wrong with Pan Am?"'

Does he think about why he was saved?

'Our whole family, all our families, we're very much into the belief that what we do has been written before you come to this world,' said Jaswant, whose grandparents emigrated from the Punjab region of India to rural Kenya, where the family had a sugar cane farm.

'Everything has been scheduled: when you are going to go, when you are not going to go, what will happen to you, what will happen to your family. It's all in our religion. It's very firm, that the schedule has been made from upstairs.

'I don't know the way He sets things up. He took them and left me alone. Somebody pulled my arm and said: "No, it's not your turn yet."'

Jaswant is, however, haunted by those who did not survive.

He remembers being in the line to check in and pulling faces at two young girls who were travelling with their mother.

'I told those kids: when I come back, I'll bring you chocolate. Can you believe that? Those kids are gone; the ones I was going to bring chocolate for.

'And I forgot the chocolate anyway, because there was no time. But I still remember them.'

Jaswant spent years trying to track down a local upstate New York man whose son was killed in the bombing, to sit with him and share their grief.

One day he chanced upon a priest in a parking lot near his Valley Cottage home, who came over to pet Jaswant's dog. They began talking, and eventually the priest mentioned that a member of his congregation, John Zwynenburg, – the man Jaswant had been searching for, who had lost his son, Mark, 29.

Jaswant called Zwynenburg, and the pair arranged to meet.

'He met me in a park. We talked, and cried,' said Jaswant.

Every year, on the anniversary of the bombing, Jaswant goes to temple to pray for those who died.

'I have never once thought, 'I was saved, I'm great,' he said. 'I still think: 'Oh my God, those people, those people.'

In 1991, just three years after the disaster, two Libyans, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, were charged with 270 counts of murder.

In 2000 they were put on trial in the Netherlands under a special arrangement by which Scottish judges presided over the case near The Hague. The venue was chosen as neutral ground after Libya refused to hand over the suspects to either Britain or America, and Western nations rejected the notion of them being tried in their home country.

Fhimah was acquitted but al-Megrahi was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He died in May 2012, age 60, at his home in Tripoli three years after being released on compassionate grounds due to advanced prostate cancer.

But more than 30 years on, the case and, for the families, the fight for justice is not over.

On August 24, in federal court in Washington, DC, the trial will begin of a third accused bomber, Abu Agela Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi.

Now in his mid-70s, he is accused of being a bomb maker working for the Libyan intelligence services.

He was detained after the fall of Colonel Gaddafi in 2011, and in 2012 confessed to involvement in the bombing – a confession he now claims to have made under duress.

He was extradited to America in 2022.

Before the Libyans were charged, Jaswant kept a low profile for fear of people suspecting him – despite the police clearing his name.

'There was a guy in the management at the temple, and he told me: "Keep your profile low, no matter who calls you, no matter which newspaper calls you, no matter which channel calls you. Ignore them."'

'Which was very true, because we didn't know for a long time who was behind it.'

Jaswant was not consulted for the new Netflix show – first aired on the BBC last year. None of the producers contacted him, and he has not seen it. He told the Daily Mail he would not bother to seek it out but would watch if 'it comes to me.'

Similarly, Jaswant was unaware of the impending criminal case. Despite being so intimately affected by the bombing, he admitted that he follows the 'headlines' only loosely.

Which is not to say he doesn't still possess strong feelings about the crash, its victims and the alleged perpetrators. Al-Megrahi, he said, should not have been released. No such compassion was shown, after all, to his victims.

'If I had power, if I knew a big shot, I'd say: "Why did you let him go?"' Jaswant said. 'He should have stayed inside. But it's too late.'

And what should happen to any bomber who has yet to face justice? Jaswant paused before delivering his verdict: 'Whoever did it, God, please don't spare him. Punish him as much as you can.'