Bhagwati Prasad Bhatt and Rajesh Shivrain, pilots who had a lot of experience driving the plane and had a long time of flying hours under their belt. But this experience didn’t manage them to save several lives in an accident. On December 22, 2015, both the pilots had taken the Beech Super King B200 aircraft and took off from Indira Gandhi International Airport at 9:40 am. Suddenly, one of the pilots realized that there was a problem with one of the plane’s engines.

The plane immediately nose-dived with a very less time after take-off. Before the co-pilot could react, the left engine of the aircraft stopped working. Thus, with only the right one functioning, the craft was forced into vertical position coming down. The only way the pilots reacted soon was making it crash into a tree near the airport boundary wall while the aircraft is going towards a densely populated area.

The pilots managed to maneuver the aircraft away from the railway tracks where an express train was arriving and a residential colony housing hundreds of people. The aircraft crashed to the airport sewage treatment facilities wall and broke into two. Though the pilots can’t save the lives of 10 Border Security Force (BSF) persons, but they managed to save several lives by bravely maneuvering away from a parked oil tanker at the ATF fuel depot and a densely populated colony.

In 60 seconds, the lives of 10 Border Security Force (BSF) personnel ended in a massive fireball. The commitment of the pilots is appreciable that Shivrain still had the plane’s joystick in his hand when his body was recovered from the debris of the crashed aircraft.

“All of us come from a technical background. He had the best looks in the family and wanted to become a model. After being persuaded to choose a different line, Bhagwati went for the Combined Defense Services and enrolled into paramilitary forces,” said Bhatt’s elder brother. Various questions have been raised on this incident regarding the older air crafts. Those 10 lives lost in the tragedy cannot be compensated, but this must bring a change in the government’s policy about using the older versions of air crafts.