The incident occurred around 1.15 pm on Thursday, minutes after the MiG-21 took off from the Chabua IAF base in Dibrugarh district on a routine flight. While the aircraft crashed on to a paddy field at Hatiali close to the Chabua IF base, the pilot, Flying Officer Hemant Dave, managed to eject on time and landed safely with the help of a parachute.

Defence spokesperson at Tezpur Col Rajesh Kalia said the aircraft was on a routine flight when it apparently developed some technical snag which the pilot detected immediately and thus bailed out of it to safety.

The IAF authorities have already instituted a court of inquiry into the incident. Flying Officer Hemant Dave was later sent for a medical examination, the defence spokesperson said.

Black box of crashed AN32 recovered

GUWAHATI: The black box of the ill-fated AN32 aircraft of the Indian Air Force that crashed in West Siang district in Arunachal Pradesh on June 9, killing all the 13 persons on board, was recovered on Wednesday evening, official sources said.

An IAF team found the black box in dense jungles, about 25 km from Tato town, near the crash site. The black box was later flown to Jorhat IAF base for decoding. IAF officials said the box would be sent to the IAF Eastern Command headquarters at Shillong if the facility at Jorhat was unable to decode it.

The AN32 transport aircraft crashed minutes after taking off from the Advanced Landing Ground at Mechuka, close to the Chinese border, in Arunachal’s West Kameng district on June 9. The plane was headed for the IAF base at Jorhat in Upper Assam with seven IAF and six Army personnel on board. Jorhat IAF base raised an alarm after the plane did not arrive even after the scheduled time. Later that evening, villagers reported to the police that they had seen an aircraft blow up in mid-air “with a big bang”.