An aircraft crashed in Balaghat district of Indian state of Madhya Pradeshon Saturday, killing both pilots – captain Mohit Thakur from Himachal and VMaheshwari, a trainee from Gujarat.
The plane, a Diamond DA-40, operated by the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya UranAkademi, commonly called IGRUA, had taken off from Birsi Airport inMaharashtra’s Gondia, and crashed 40km away in a dense forest in Balaghat.
The cause of the crash is yet unknown. Video footage of the site nearBhakkutola village in Kirnapur region (500km from Bhopal) shows villagersstanding around a charred body and smouldering wreckage.
The four-seater plane crashed around 3.20pm, 15 minutes after taking offfrom the Birsi airstrip. The wreckage was found in a 100ft-deep gorge.Police and rescuers had a hard time reaching the crash site, having tocover the last 7km on foot through hilly terrain and dense jungles.
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The SP of Gondia district of Maharashtra, a medical team and Hawk Forcejawans from MP set off for the crash site. This is the third plane crash inMP this year – on January 6, a training plane hit a temple and crashed,killing the pilot and injuring the trainee, and on January 22, aMirage-2000 and a Sukhoi-30 collided mid-air during a training exercise andcrashed, killing one of the three pilots.
This is not the first accident in Balaghat. In 2017, a flying instructorand a trainee female co-pilot of National Flying Training Academy werekilled after their aircraft crashed in Vainganga River bordering Gondiadistrict of Maharashtra and MP’s Balaghat district. The victims were flightinstructor Captain Rajan Gupta (35) and trainee Himani Kalyani (24) fromDelhi.
