'Not Indian', says government after plane with 6 onboard crashes in Afghanistan

‘Not Indian’, says government after plane with 6 onboard crashes in Afghanistan

A small aircraft that crashed in Afghanistan carrying six people was not an Indian carrier and the plane was refuelled at Gaya airport in Bihar en route to its journey to Moscow from Thailand, the government said on Sunday.

After reports surfaced that an Indian plane was involved in the crash, the civil aviation ministry said the aircraft was registered in Morocco. It also said the aircraft, an air ambulance, did not belong to any Indian carrier.

“The unfortunate plane crash that has just occurred in Afghanistan is neither an Indian scheduled aircraft nor a non-scheduled (NSOP)/charter aircraft. It is a Moroccan-registered small aircraft. More details are awaited,” the ministry said in a post on X.

“The aircraft was an air ambulance and had been flying from Thailand to Moscow and did refuelling at Gaya airport,” the ministry said in a statement.

A source said the plane had started from Utapao airport in Thailand, news agency PTI reported.

ABOUT THE CRASH

Russian aviation authorities on Sunday said a charter plane with six people onboard disappeared from radar screens while it was flying over a remote, mountainous area in Afghanistan’s far north Badakhshan province on Saturday. This came after Afghan police said it received reports of a plane crash in the region.

Russian aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia said the aircraft was a charter ambulance flight travelling from Thailand’s Utapao airport in Pattaya to Moscow via India and Uzbekistan.

The pilot of the doomed plane said fuel was running low and he would try to land at an airport in Tajikistan, Russian news outlet SHOT reported, citing an unnamed source, Reuters reported.

Later, the pilot reported that one engine had stopped and the second one also malfunctioned, according to SHOT.

According to Russia’s state-run TASS news agency, the plane was conducting a private medical evacuation from Thailand’s Pattaya to Moscow, the Russian embassy in Bangkok said.

“On board was a bedridden patient in serious condition, a Russian citizen, who was transported from one of the hospitals in Pattaya to Russia,” the RIA news agency reported, citing a source at Thailand’s Utapao airport, from where the aircraft took off.

“She was accompanied by her husband, a private entrepreneur, also a Russian citizen, who paid for the flight,” the RIA said.

Russia said its Investigative Committee opened a criminal case to find out whether safety rules had been flouted, Reuters reported.

In a statement, the Taliban-run Afghan aviation ministry said the Russian plane was not planned to fly over Afghanistan and it diverted from its original route “probably due to technical issues”.

A ministry technical team was investigating the matter, the statement said.

Watch Live TV in English

Watch Live TV in Hindi