Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and four others died in an aircraft crash on Wednesday morning near Baramati, reviving memories of other fatal air accidents that claimed the lives of political heavyweights and prominent personalities.
The plane carrying Nationalist Congress Party leader Pawar (66) and others was attempting to land in Pune’s Baramati area when it crashed. Pawar was among five people confirmed dead in the accident.
Over the decades, several notable figures have perished in air tragedies. On January 24, 1966, nuclear physicist Homi Jehangir Bhabha died when Air India Flight 101 crashed into Mont Blanc in the Swiss Alps, owing to miscommunication with Geneva air traffic control.
Congress leader Sanjay Gandhi, son of then prime minister Indira Gandhi, died on June 23, 1980, when the aircraft he was piloting at the Delhi Flying Club lost control and crashed near Safdarjung Airport.
Senior Congress leader and former civil aviation minister Madhavrao Scindia died on September 30, 2001, when his private plane crashed in Uttar Pradesh due to poor weather conditions en route to a rally in Kanpur.
On March 3, 2002, Lok Sabha Speaker and Telugu Desam Party leader G M C Balayogi was killed when a helicopter carrying him crashed into a pond near Kaikalur in Andhra Pradesh.
Meghalaya Rural Development Minister Cyprian Sangma and nine others died on September 22, 2004, when a Pawan Hans helicopter crashed near Barapani lake between Guwahati and Shillong.
Also read: Ajit Pawar death: AAIB to probe plane crash at Baramati
South Indian actress K S Sowmya, known as Soundarya, died on April 17, 2004, when the aircraft she was aboard crashed while flying from Bengaluru to Karimnagar.
Industrialist and Haryana minister Om Prakash Jindal and Agriculture Minister Surender Singh were killed in a helicopter crash in Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur district in 2005 while travelling from Delhi to Chandigarh.
Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy died on September 2, 2009, after his Bell 430 helicopter crashed in the Nallamala forest amid bad weather.
Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu and four others were killed on April 30, 2011, when their helicopter crashed between Tawang and Itanagar.
India’s first Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat, died on December 8, 2021, when a helicopter carrying him and 11 others crashed near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu.
Former Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani was among those killed in a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crash in Ahmedabad on June 12, 2025, which also claimed hundreds of passengers and dozens of people on the ground.
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