This picture clicked by a villager minutes after a Cessna crash-landed near Gota on May 14 proves conclusively that there were only two girls in the aircraft.
That there were two women in the Cessna plane that crash-landed in a field near Gota on May 14 can no longer be called just a supposition. In all probability, it’s a fact.
Mirror — which, on the basis of witnesses’ account, had disputed the official theory that a female trainee pilot and a male instructor were on board — has a picture showing two females in pilots’ uniform beside the partly mangled plane.
The Truth
This image, taken by a witness to the May 14 crash-landing, shows two females in pilots’ uniform beside the partly mangled plane. It appears to have been clicked just moments after the plane hurtled to the ground. There are hardly any people around except the two women and a man, a clear indication that it is one of the initial scenes after the
emergency landing.
While the picture, taken by a witness to the incident, does not show the two exiting the light aircraft, it confirms the presence of another woman in uniform at the site of the dramatic landing. The image appears to have been clicked just moments after the plane hurtled to the ground. There are hardly any people around except the two women and a man, a clear indication that it is one of the initial scenes after the crash-landing.
The picture raises two pertinent questions: what was another putative trainee pilot doing at the site and why did she disappear when airport officials turned up to take a stock of the situation. Officials of Ahmedabad Aviation & Aeronautics (AAA) Ltd, which owns the Cessna 152, have repeatedly stated that trainee Gayatri Sardeshpande was on a training sortie with her instructor, captain Naresh Devjani, on May 14.
They have vehemently denied that there was another female trainee with Gayatri, who has clocked over 190 flying hours, in the two-seater aircraft whose engine failed in mid-air. However, people who rushed to the spot near Chainpur immediately after the crash-landing claim Devjani was not on board the
Cessna when it hit the ground. They allege that there was another woman with Gayatri. The picture with Mirror partly proves this.
When claims of the presence of another female trainee pilot beside Gayatri were first made by ‘witnesses’, AAA general manager colonel V V Nagar had offered a perfectly logical explanation. He said that after the crash-landing, Gayatri had called her friends from AAA to the spot. “One of them was a woman,” he had stated. The emergence of the new image, however, casts doubt over this foolproof theory.
Even if one believes that Gayatri called her friends, the question is how did they reach the spot before people living nearby did? If one considers witnesses’ accounts, it seems quite improbable that the unidentified female in a pilot’s uniform arrived at the spot after the aircraft came down. Take, for instance, the detailed statement of one such witness, Hitesh Patel.
“I heard a loud whir in the air. I immediately realised a plane was coming down. It landed and skidded for some time before coming to a halt. I was surprised to see two females, aged around 22 and in uniform, emerge from the ‘smoky’ plane,” Patel said.
“I spoke to them, they appeared dazed, but in control. One of them even asked me to step away as there was a possibility of the plane exploding.”
Seven villagers — Vijay, Bhavna Patel, Chandrabhan, Chetan, Pravin Sindhav, Kamu and Kersinh — have also given a
similar account. They claim they spoke to two female pilots and that there was no male on board the Cessna.
The other intriguing question is that if flying instructor Devjani was with Gayatri, why didn’t he take control of the light aircraft when its engine failed. According to the flight plan submitted by AAA on May 14, Gayatri was the pilot in command of the Cessna 152. She apparently continued to be in charge even after its engine failed. Why did Devjani risk his and her life by allowing her to pilot the plane in the moment of such grave crisis?
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