Plane crashes in Nepal, 10 Indians among 18 killed

Mtoday news / PTI

Kathmandu, Sept 25:  A plane carrying tourists to view Mount Everest crashed while attempting to land in Nepal on Sunday, killing all 19 people on board, officials said. The turboprop plane belonging to Buddha Air was carrying 13 foreign tourists, three Nepalese passengers and three crew members when it crashed in Bisankunarayan village, just a few miles (kilometres) south of the capital, Kathmandu.

 

Rewant Kuwar, an official at Kathmandu’s international airport rescue office, said that 18 bodies were pulled out of the plane’s wreckage, and that another victim died later after being rushed to a hospital.

Among the foreigners who died in the crash, 10 were Indian nationals, two were U.S. citizens and the other was Japanese, Tourism Secretary Ganeshraj Joshi said.

 

 

 

 

The Indian nationals killed in the crash were identified as Pankaj Mehta and his wife Chhaya, and eight men from Tamil Nadu - M V Marathachalam, M Manimaran, V M Kanakasabesan, A K Krishnan, R M Minaxi Sunsaram, K Thiyagarajan, T Dhanasekaran and Kattoos Mahalingam.

57-year-old Mehta was working as chief of the health section of UNICEF, Kathmandu. According to Mehta’s colleagues here, the couple had been residing in Kathmandu for the past three years and had possibly come from Gujarat.

The eight tourists from Tamil Nadu were staying at Hotel Grand at Tahachal, according to the hotel’s Sales Manager Phurba Sherpa.

The two Americans killed were identified as Andrew Wade and Natalie Neilan, while the Japanese national was identified as Ujima Toshinori.

The three crew members killed in the crash were Captain J D Tamrakar, Captain P Adhikari and air hostess A Shrestha.

A Simrik Airlines helicopter landed at the accident site at Kotdanda and transported the dead to Kathmandu, according to Chief District Officer Ratna Raj Pandey.

Nepal’s Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Bijaya Kumar Gachhadar visited the Tribhuvan International Airport here to take stock of the situation, especially handling of the bodies.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal has formed a three-member team, headed by former Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) Director General Jajeshraj Dali, to investigate the crash.

In a statement, the Indian embassy here expressed profound grief over the death of the Indian nationals in the crash.

Bodies of all ten Indians were taken to TU Teaching Hospital after being flown to Kathmandu.

Quoting witnesses, local TV channels said flames could be seen coming from the plane just before it crashed.

An eyewitness, Haribol Poudel, told Avenues Television that the plane had hit the roof of a house in the village and disintegrated into several pieces. No casualties were reported on the ground.

Poudel said it was foggy, and that visibility was very low in the mountainous area.

The Beechcraft 1900D plane - manufactured by Raytheon Aircraft, now known as Hawker Beechcraft - had taken the passengers to view Mount Everest and other high peaks and was returning to Kathmandu when it crashed at Kotdanda hills in Lalitpur district. The one-hour "mountain flight" takes tourists over the Everest region, and passengers can view some of the world’s highest peaks from the airplane windows.

In December last year, a Twin Otter plane carrying 22 people, mostly Bhutanese nationals and an American, crashed after taking off from a small airstrip 140 km east of Kathmandu.

Earlier in November, a helicopter, which was on a mission to rescue two stranded climbers, crashed near Mount Everest, killing two people.

Three months before this accident, a plane going to the Everest region crashed in bad weather, killing all 14 people on board, including four Americans, a Japanese and a British national.