A villager was killed and 25 others injured when a MiG-27 aircraft of the Indian Air Force crashed in a field in Jalpaiguri on Saturday morning. The victim, B, Rai, was a farmer. At around 10.30 am the fighter jet crashed at the field during a routine sortie at Bhotputti village in between Moynaguri and Changrabandha minutes after it had taken off from the Hasimara airbase of the IAF.
“Rai was ploughing at the field then and was killed in the crash,” said IG (north Bengal) Ranvir Kumar. The aircraft had developed a technical snag on air following the take-off from the airbase under the Eastern Air Command of the IAF, preliminary investigations suggested.
The EAC has ordered a probe in the crash, a defence ministry official at New Delhi informed. The site of the crash is 25 km away from the airbase.
“Soon after the crash the aircraft caught fire. 25 villagers were injured. The injured were admitted to a local hospital. Condition of five of them is serious. The pilot of the aircraft, Saket Verma, who managed to eject, was injured in the crash also. He has been hospitalised,” said Anand Kumar SP (Jalpaiguri).
He added that a residential building in the vicinity was also damaged in impact of the crash. Later four injured were shifted to Siliguri Medical College and Hospital. Large number of villagers thronged at the site of the crash during the day as broken parts of the aircraft lay on the field.
This was the second crash involving the MiG-27 under the EAC this year so far. On February 16, an IAF squadron leader was killed when the MiG-27 he was flying crashed near Siliguri.
The IAF may subject its MiG-27 fleet to more checks in the wake of the latest crash. That process is still on. The ones that cleared the tests had commenced flying. In the past 13 years, the IAF has lost nearly 100 Russian-origin MiG aircraft in crashes. In the past five years alone, the IAF has lost more than 60 of its aircraft in air-crashes.