Crashed aircraft belonged to Kerala based jewellers

The six-seater aircraft that crashed into a dry lakebed in Bangalore on Saturday afternoon belonged to well-known jewellers group of Kerala Joy Alukkas.

All the four persons, who died in the mishap, were licensed pilots and they were taking the recently acquired Italian-made P-68C to Kochi to pick up the group chairman Joy Alukka to take him to Trivandrum to attend a function.

The aircraft was piloted by Flying Officer Santosh Kumar while Shanmugam was the co-pilot. The other two occupants of the aircraft Sunil Joseph and Mohammed Shabeer also held valid pilot licenses, police said.

The four had taken off with the aircraft from the Jakkur Flying Club Hangar fuelled it at the HAL airport in Bangalore and were headed for Kochi when the mishap took place. Within five minutes after taking off from HAL airport at 3.35 pm, the pilot had radioed the Air Traffic Control (ATC) about a technical snag and said the aircraft was returning immediately.

But, the ATC lost track of the aircraft and soon dispatched a helicopter to search for the plane, which had disappeared from the radar. But, the helicopter returned after ATC received a call from the police about the crash.

According eye-witnesses, the aircraft was spotted wobbling as it flew low over a school in Gowdanapalya area before it hit a palm tree and a water tank. Next, the aircraft plummeted and fell upside down in the lake bed. The aircraft’s front wheel got detached and fell on the terrace of a house in the vicinity. The crash site is barely a kilometer away from the residence of former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda in Padmanabhanagar.

The localites rushed to the spot managed to pull out Shanmugam, who was still breathing. Though Shanmugam was rushed to the hospital, he breathed his last en-route. Fire and Emergency services too reached the spot and shifted the bodies to Victoria Hospital.

A spokesman for Joy Alukkas said the plane had been purchased a couple of months ago to take the group chairman to its branches spread in different parts of the country. The aircraft had made occasional flights between Bangalore, Kochi, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and other places, where Joy Alukkas has its outlets.

Deputy Inspector General of Police (Fire Services) T Suneel Kumar told reporters that ATC and Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials will inspect the crash site and procure the black box to determine the cause of the crash. However, Suneel Kumar said the crash was due to a technical snag. “But, we are yet to pin point it”, he said.