MiG, one of the oldest aircraft in the IAF fleet, are known to crash very often

Jamshedpur, May 21: A nightmare is unfolding at Sushila Sinha’s residence in Mango. Since morning, anxious neighbours and acquaintances have enquiring about her son, Ajit, a pilot in Indian Air Force, who has been missing since Thursday.

Ajit’s MiG 27 took off from Hashimara air base in North Bengal for a routine sortie on Thursday and lost contact with base.

The search for the aircraft by IAF has proved futile. “There is still no news about my brother. We are worried about his safety,” said sibling Anuj.

He said wing commander of the Hashimara air base Anil Kumar informed them on Thursday evening that Ajit’s plane was missing on a routine flight.

Quoting the wing commander, Anuj, a business administration student of Ramaiya College, Bangalore, said Ajit boarded the plane at 11.45 am. “Even after a day, they have not been able to trace my brother,” said a distraught Anuj as his brother-in-law tried to console him.

One of Anuj’s neighbours said Ajit was supposed to visit the city for a few days.

“His family was waiting for him. But since Thursday evening, the family has been in shock. They have been making repeated calls to the IAF base. Some of their relatives have also arrived after hearing the news,” he added.

His mother, Sushila, is silent and prefers to pray instead. Family members sit by the telephone waiting for some kind of news. “We don’t even know what happened to him. Whether he is safe or not,” said Anuj.

Recalling the fighter pilot’s childhood, family members said Ajit fancied fighter planes since childhood.

He always clamoured for toy planes, some of which still adorn the glass-panelled showcase of his house in Mango’s New Subhash Colony.

After completing his Plus Two from Loyola School, he joined the National Defence Academy (NDA), Pune and underwent training at the Air Force Academy in Hyderabad in 2000. He was commissioned as a pilot the next year.

Ajit’s first posting was in Tezpur, Assam followed by a stint at Bagdogra before dropping anchor at Hashimara air base in West Bengal.

Ajit’s immediate family comprises his mother, younger brother and sister, who is married in Mumbai. His father, a professor of Jamshedpur Co-operative College, passed away in 1997.

However, the family has a small consolation. The missing plane is not the first fighter craft in the 72-year history of the Indian Airforce to disappear mysteriously.

A MiG-21 aircraft piloted by flying officer B. Agarwal failed to land at Bhuj airbase in Gujarat on June 25, 1990 and till date the aircraft and the pilot have not been traced.

Similarly, a MiG 21 trainer piloted by Squadron leader I. Khan and flying officer D. Dhaiya went missing after being airborne from Tezpur airport in Assam on April 20, 2002. It has not been found till date even after a three-month intense search by transport aircraft and helicopters.

As is the tradition of IAF, both the pilots were officially declared dead and squadron leader Idris Khan given a “vayu sena” medal posthumously.

On the latest disappearance, airforce sources said bad weather and heavy rains were hampering rescue operations and alert sounded in three neighbouring countries — Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal — had also not borne any fruit so far.

The sources said the last communication from the pilot was that he had sighted the Bagdogra airport where he was supposed to land.