India’s Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat was among those who lost their lives on Wednesday when an Army chopper carrying him, his wife, and several of his staff members, including his defence assistant, security commandos and other Air Force personnel, crashed at 12.20 pm in the Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu. The tragedy is a grim reminder of the deaths in aerial mishaps of several prominent Indians over the years. Here’s a look at some of them:
1. Legendary freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose is considered by many to have died in a plane crash on August 18, 1945, in present-day Taiwan. However, others insist to this day that he survived the mishap.
2. The Maharaja of Jodhpur, Hanwant Singh, died in a plane crash with his mistress Zubeida while he was campaigning in India’s first general elections in 1952.
3. Renowned nuclear scientist Homi Bhabha died in an Air India plane crash in Switzerland on January 24, 1966.
4. Union minister Surendra Mohan Kumaramangalam was killed in the crash of Indian Airlines Flight 440 on May 31, 1973.
5. Sanjay Gandhi, the younger son of then prime minister Indira Gandhi, was killed when a glider he was flying crashed soon after taking off from the Safdarjung airport in Delhi on June 23, 1980.
6. Considered Malayalam cinema’s first action hero, actor Jayan died in a helicopter stunt gone awry during a shoot on November 16, 1980.
7. Industrialist Ashok Birla was killed in an air crash in Bengaluru in 1990.
8. Punjab governor Surendra Nath and nine members of his family were killed when a government aircraft crashed on July 9, 1994, in Himachal Pradesh.
9. Senior Congress leader and former union minister Madhavrao Scindia was killed in a plane crash on September 30, 2001, while travelling to Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh to address a public rally.
10. Lok Sabha speaker and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leader GMC Balayogi died in a chopper crash on March 3, 2002, in Andhra Pradesh.
11. Actress Soundarya and 3 others were killed when the aircraft carrying them to Andhra Pradesh to campaign for the BJP crashed near Bengaluru on April 17, 2004.
12. Meghalaya minister C Sangma, three legislators and six others were killed in a helicopter crash in September 2004.
13. Haryana power minister OP Jindal, a noted industrialist, and agriculture minister Surendra Singh were killed when the chopper carrying them went down near Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh on March 31, 2005.
14. Two-time chief minister of Andhra Pradesh YS Rajasekhara Reddy died in a helicopter crash on September 2, 2009, at Rudrakonda Hill.
15. Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Dorjee Khandu was found dead in Luguthang, near the China border on May 4, 2011, five days after the helicopter that he was using went missing.
Read all the Latest India News here
Comments
0 comment