BSF aircraft crash: Identity of all 10 victims medically established, faces reconstructed

New Delhi: Identity of all ten victims of a BSF plane crash in New Delhi has been “medically established” and doctors have surgically reconstructed facial and bodily disfigurement suffered by them. The bodies of the paramilitary personnel were sent to AIIMS after they were pulled out of the accident site at Shahabad Mohanmadpur village in Dwarka area, with some of them in partially burnt condition.[caption id=“attachment_2556124” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Investigators look at the remains of a small BSF plane that crashed outside the airport in New Delhi on Tuesday. PTI [/caption] “Two bodies - of the pilot and the co-pilot - were partially burnt while other eight bodies showed only injuries but no burning. Identity of all the victims has been medically established with the help of finger printing,” Sudhir Gupta, head of the AIIMS’ Forensic Department, said. “The cause of death as per the postmortem report is fall and blunt impact inside the aircraft,” he said. The victims after the incident were identified as chief pilot and Deputy Commandant Bhagwati Prasad Bhatt of BSF, Rajesh Shivrain, co-pilot and second-in-command of paramilitary SSB, Deputy Commandant D Kumar, Inspectors Raghvendra Kumar Yadav and SN Sharma, Sub-Inspectors Ravindra Kumar, Surendra Singh, CL Sharma, ASI DP Chauhan and constable KR Rawat. Also, each of them had their identity cards in their jacket pockets, which helped in forensic investigation, Gupta said. A ten-seater Ranchi-bound twin-engine Super King B-200 carrying BSF personnel and technicians crashed between 9:40-9:45 AM killing all ten men on board. “The plane flew over the railway line and crashed onto the boundary of a sewage treatment plant on the periphery of the airport premises after hitting a tree close by,” a top official of the Delhi Fire Service said. The aircraft was blown to smithereens by the impact of the crash and there was hardly any wreckage left to salvage from. While few bodies were found just outside the plant’s tank in burnt condition, the rest were pulled out of the tank, which didn’t show any burning, the official said. Doctors at AIIMS also tried to lend dignity in death to the victims by surgically reconstructing some of the features. “We surgically reconstructed the skull, facial structures and body parts in honour of those men,” Gupta added. The ill-fated plane took a turn after taking off at around 9.37 AM and hit a tree while apparently approaching to land following a possible technical problem, according to officials from the ATC and DGCA. “It then crash landed hitting the periphery of the airport, then dragged on smashing through a portion of the boundary wall,” the official said. Small pieces of the wreckage of the fuselage are currently being salvaged by a team of police, disaster management and other officials, he said, adding, “efforts to retrieve the black box is still on.” PTI