List of Indian Leaders who died in Aerial Crash

The recent chopper mishap in which Jharkhand Chief Minister Arjun Munda was injured, reminds us the aerial crashes in India over the past decades. Many politicians and VIPs have died and several had narrow escapes while they were on board.

The mishap at the Birsa Munda airport in Ranchi on Wednesday is a reminder of the deaths of political leaders like Sanjay Gandhi, Madhavrao Scindia, YS Rajasekhara Reddy, GMC Balayogi, S Mohan Kumaramangalam, Dorjee Khandu, OP Jindal and Surendra Singh.

History says that Subhas Bose was the first Indian political leader to die in a plane crash during freedom struggle on Aug 18, 1945 in Taiwan. He was believed to have survived, but no further information recorded till now.

Next, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's younger son Sanjay Gandhi was killed in a plane crash just after taking off from New Delhi's Safdarjung airport on June 23, 1980.

Before Sanjay Gandhi, Congress leader Mohan Kumaramangalam was killed when the Indian Airlines plane crashed near New Delhi on May 30, 1973.

Punjab governor Surendra Nath and 12 others, including nine of his family, were killed when the plane crashed in a mountainous region of Himachal Pradesh, minutes after taking off the airport on July 9, 1994.

Dera Natung, the Arunachal Pradesh education minister, was killed when the Pawan Hans craft crashed near Tawang because of poor visibility in May 2001.

Senior Congress leader Madhavrao Scindia was killed in an aircraft crash on September 30, 2001 while flying to Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh.

Lok Sabha Speaker and Telugu Desam leader G M C Balayogi was the victim of a chopper crash on March 3, 2002 in Andhra Pradesh. The crash had occurred when the pilot of the Bell 206 helicopter had mistakenly landed on a pond thinking that a land.

C Sangma, the Meghalaya community development minister, was killed in a chopper crash in September 2004.

Haryana's power minister O P Jindal and state agriculture minister Surendra Singh were killed in a chopper crash near Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh on March 31, 2005.

Last year, Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Dorjee Khandu was killed on April 30 when a helicopter carrying him and four others from Tawang to Itanagar crashed in a deep forested area.

Khandu's death story resembles the tragedy of YSR, who was on board and the chopper crashed in a dense forest in Andhra Pradesh. His body was found 27 hours after the helicopter went missing on September 3, 2009.

However, some leaders including Jharkhan Chief minister Arjun Munda were lucky and survived having narrow escapes from the air crash.

List of Survivors in Aerial Crash:

Former Prime Minister Morarji Desai had escaped along with then Arunachal Pradesh chief minister P K Thungon when his special aircraft crashed in Assam in November 1977.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot was also lucky to get escaped from the plane crash in Churu district in 2001.

Politicians including Congress leader Ahmed Patel and union ministers Prithviraj Chauhan and Kumari Selja had escaped from the air crash in 2004 in Gujarat. Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal had a narrow escape.

BJP leaders Rajnath Singh and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi had an escape when they were flying to Rampur in Uttar Pradesh in 2010.

On May 9, 2012, Jharkhand CM Arjun Munda and five others including his wife Meera miraculously survived when their helicopter crash-landed in Ranchi.