New Delhi, Dec. 13 :     An eight-year-old girl was crushed to death at the Indira Gandhi International Airport this morning after an escalator snapped and its metal chains and plates twisted themselves around her head.  For about half-an-hour, in the absence of airport staff, no one could trace the switch that operated the moving stairway. Jyotsna Jethani, along with her family, had arrived by an Air-India flight from Dubai at 2.30 am to attend a family wedding. Some passengers chose to take the escalator to the immigration counter. As the first few passengers rode their way down, a bag got stuck to an edge of the metal plate. A couple of passengers bent down and struggled to yank it out. As the luggage moved with the escalator, a part of metal strip on one of the steps came off.  What followed was a nightmare. The gap created in that step began swallowing up the escalator chain, throwing off those already on the stairs. A few tumbled and fell forward. Jyotsna was among them. She fell headlong and her relatives saw her face disappearing in the fatal gap.  Another elderly woman, Usharani Nagpaul, on a visit from the US, had one of her feet entwined in that twisted knot of metal. She is now in Apollo hospital with a six-inch long and two-inch deep wound.  Rajesh Jethani, Jyotsna?s uncle who tried to pull her out from the mess, was also wounded as the metal slashed part of his palm. He could step out of hospital only after 14 stitches.  As the child, her face being crushed ever so slowly by the chains, shrieked for help, passengers scurried to find the switch that would stop the escalator. But they could not. No employee of the Airports Authority of India was around to save the girl. Jyotsna?s family, including her ageing grandfather and mother, watched helplessly as she died without help.  The Jethanis were on way to Jodhpur for the wedding of their son Rajesh with a Russian girl. The couple had already married but the family wanted a traditional wedding at their ancestral home in Jodhpur. Jyotsna?s father was away in Surat on business. The child?s body was handed over to her relatives after a post-mortem. She will be cremated in Jodhpur. Describing the accident as ??unfortunate??, airport director H.S. Bains said: ??We are investigating how the escalator snapped.??  Jyotsna?s grandfather, Parmanand Jethani, complained of gross negligence and wondered how it could take so much time to get help. ??The insensitivity of the airport authorities has hurt me more than anything else. For two hours, no one came even to offer consolation,?? he said.