Chandigarh: One farm labourer was killed while nine villagers were injured after an unidentified aircraft crashed and caught fire in Punjab’s Bathinda district in the wee hours of Wednesday after Indian armed forces carried out `Op Sindoor’ targeting terror launch pads in Pakistan and PoK.
The incident occurred around 2 am in a harvested wheat field in village Akalian Kalan, about half a kilometre from the residential area of the village and about 20 km from the district headquarter. Incidentally, the crash site is also just about 20 km from Bhisiana Air Force station in Bathinda.
Eyewitnesses held that they saw an aircraft flying unusually low which moments later crashed into the fields.
Even though some people rushed to the spot after the crash, the aircraft which had caught fire, exploded moments later killing one Govind, a farm labourer, a native of Charkhi Dadri district of Haryana, and injuring at least nine others. The villagers held that shrapnel from the explosion of the aircraft hit the labourers.
According to unconfirmed reports, they were injured after they tried to go near the burning aircraft and a few of them, including Govind, attempted to make videos on their phones and the aircraft exploded.
The villagers said that the injured were rushed to the nearby health centre in nearby Goniana town where Govind was declared brought dead, while, the injured were referred to civil hospital, Bathinda. One of the injured was also said to have been shifted to AIIMS, Bathinda.
However, the defence and civil authorities which reached the spot later cordoned off the crash site and initiated investigation into the incident. There was, however, no official information about the identity or origin of the aircraft, its pilot or the cause of the incident. Local police and administration had also pressed the fire brigade into service. The Air Force team collected the debris of the crashed aircraft.
The ministry of defence, the Indian Air Force or the Indian Army had not issued any statement regarding the aircraft, its origin, its crash or the pilot, till the time of filing this report.
