New Delhi: Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar died Wednesday in an air accident at Baramati airport. The 55-year-old Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader was among the five onboard a Bombardier Learjet 45 that burst into flames shortly after being cleared for landing by the Air Traffic Control (ATC).
According to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the business jet crashed around 25 minutes after it first made contact with the ATC.
Ajit Pawar was traveling to Baramati to campaign ahead of the upcoming zilla parishad elections in the state. Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to X to convey his condolences, calling Pawar’s untimely demise “shocking and saddening”. The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) has taken over the probe into the crash.
ThePrint looks at some past air accidents that claimed the lives of public figures in India.
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Sanjay Gandhi
Congress leader Sanjay Gandhi died in a plane crash on 23 June 1980, when he was 33. He was flying a Pitts S-2A aerobatic biplane, which crashed in Delhi, very close to his own residence at 12, Willingdon Crescent.
A year-long probe of the departmental inquiry by the inspector of accident blamed an unintentional spin and delay in initiation of recovery action.
The son of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Sanjay had obtained a pilot’s license in 1976.
CDS Gen Bipin Rawat
In December 2021, India’s first Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Bipin Rawat, was killed in a helicopter crash near Coonoor in the Nilgiri hills in Tamil Nadu. His wife, Madhulika, and 11 others also died in the crash.
The CDS and others on board an Indian Air Force Mi-17V5 chopper were traveling from Sulur air base to Wellington.
However, the chopper crashed into the trees in the valley and caught fire.
In 2022, the Indian Air Force (IAF) released a statement saying the helicopter crash was due to unexpected change in weather conditions, leading to spatial disorientation of the pilot, which resulted in Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT). A report tabled by the Standing Committee on Defence in 2024 then ruled the crash to be a case of human error.
Vijay Rupani
Former Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani died in the AI-171 crash in Ahmedabad in June 2025. The London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed seconds after it took off, claiming the lives of 241 of 242 people on board.
The preliminary probe report into the crash, prepared by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) showed that moments after take-off, the fuel switches transitioned from the ‘run’ to ‘cut-off’ position just one second apart. This cut-off transition starved the engines of fuel, which could be one of the key factors behind the tragedy.
Madhavrao Scindia
Senior Congress leader and father of Union Minister of Communications Jyotiraditya Scindia, Madhavrao Scindia, lost his life in an air crash in 2001. Scindia was on his way to address a rally in Kanpur, when the Beechcraft C90 King air plane crashed near a village in Bhogaon tehsil of Mainpuri district of central Uttar Pradesh. Seven more people, including the pilot and journalists who were aboard the plane, lost their lives in the crash.
A report of the Committee of Inquiry, submitted in September 2001, said a probable cause of crash could be that the pilot, while flying through an active thunder storm at cruise altitude encountered severe updrafts in intense and mature cloud formation.
“The pilot…possibly underwent an abnormal and abrupt manoeuvre, most probably a steep spiral dive, resulting in inflight breakage of the aircraft structure on account of aerodynamic overloads leading to total loss of controls followed with heavy impact with the ground causing fatal injuries to all the occupants,” the report said.
Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy
Then chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, popularly known as YSR, died in a helicopter crash in 2009. The twin-engined Bell 430 helicopter had crashed in the Nallamala Hills of Andhra Pradesh.
A 2010 report by a four-member enquiry committee constituted by the central government with Pawan Hans CMD R.K. Tyagi as chairman had said that the accident which claimed the lives of all five people on-board occurred due to loss of control resulting in uncontrolled descent in the terrain at a very high rate of descent.
The contributory factors to this was found to be that the crew noticed a snag in the transmission of oil pressure. But they got so engrossed in the emergency checklist to resolve the snag for a vital six minutes that they “lost situational awareness of the extreme bad weather ahead”.
Dorjee Khandu
Chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh at the time, Dorjee Khandu was killed in a helicopter crash, along with four others, on 30 April 2011. The Pawan Hans A350-B3 helicopter was flying to Tawang from Itanagar, and went missing. A search operation was launched.
Khandu was found dead later in a remote village, about 30 km from Tawang near the India-China border.
G.M.C. Balayogi
Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leader and Lok Sabha Speaker G.M.C. Balayogi was killed in a chopper crash on 3 March 2002 in Andhra Pradesh.
In a report submitted by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) to the Civil Aviation secretary the same year, the crash of the Bell 206-B3 helicopter was attributed to pilot error, along with poor visibility.
O.P. Jindal and Surender Singh
Industrialist and Haryana minister Om Prakash Jindal, and Bansi Lal’s son Surender Singh—who was Haryana Agriculture Minister at the time—were killed in a helicopter crash near Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh on 31 March 2005. They were in a VTVYJ type E-120 chopper of India Flying Safe Aviation Ltd (Jindal Group). Jindal and Singh were on their way from Chandigarh to Delhi after attending a political meeting.
Ashok Birla
Prominent industrialist Ashok Birla died in a plane crash on 14 February 1990 in Bangalore. The accident, which occurred as the plane was trying to land at Bangalore airport, claimed the lives of more than 90 on board, including Birla, his wife and their daughter.
A Court of Inquiry was appointed under Karnataka high court judge, Justice K. Shivashankar Bhat to investigate the cause of the accident involving Airbus A320-231 of Indian Airlines (IC-605/VT-EPN). The report, submitted in December 1990, said that the probable cause of the accident involved the “failure of pilots to realise the gravity of the situation and respond immediately towards proper action”.
Cyprian Sangma
Meghalaya’s Rural Development Minister Cyprian Sangma was killed along with nine others, in a chopper crash on 22 September 2004. Along with Sangma, the Pawan Hans helicopter crash also killed 9 others, including legislators Heltone Marak (United Democratic Party) and Ardhendu Chaudhuri (Nationalist Congress Party).
Mohan Kumaramangalam
One of Tamil Nadu’s leading political leaders, Mohan Kumaramangalam died in an air crash in New Delhi on 31 May 1973.
The Union Minister for Steel and Mines was returning from Chennai when the Indian Airlines Flight IC440 (Boeing 737) ferrying him crashed about five km from the Palam airport in New Delhi. The crash claimed the lives of 47 others, including two MPs.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)