‘Walls of my home were shattered by explosion’

“Hearing the noise,we came out. The two pilots could be seen high up in the air. One of them was injured as his parachute got entangled on an electricity pole. We gave them water and they rested on beds outside our basti. Later a helicopter came and picked them up,” said Mahesh Hargude,villager.

The village,which was celebrating urus — a local festival — was not hit because of the quick and apt decision of the pilots,IAF officials said.

A school and a residential area of Wade Bolhai,with a population of 10,000,are located a few hundred metres from crash site. An IAF Lohegaon team rushed to the spot on receiving news of the plane crash. Besides,a team of Pune Rural police rushed to the spot to control the mob that gathered at the spot. Additional police force was deployed as people from different areas started coming to the spot to see the plane crash site. Superintendent of Pune Rural police,Shahji Solunkhe,also visited the site to ensure that law and order was maintained.

The PMC fire brigade got the plane crash information at 1.30 pm. Without losing much time,a team of Yerwada fire station,led by assistant divisional officer Ramesh Gangad and sub-fire officer Maruti Pawle,reached the crash site with a fire tender. “We found the parts of the plane scattered over a large area. Some electronic parts and tyres of the plane had caught fire. It was extinguished immediately,” said Gangad. Fire tender from Shirur fire station and a private firm were pressed into service to douse the flames.

With villagers narrating their own versions of the crash,several theories about the incident were doing the rounds. Some even said that the pilots made a call from their cellphones to the IAF station. “The plane circled around a couple of times before it began descending. The front of the plane was in flames,” said Sanjay Kamble,a farmer of the village Wade Bolhai.

The wreckage of the plane was spread over 500 metres with broken components lying on the road and the farm adjacent to the site where it crashed. An IAF team was seen collecting the parts and transporting them in IAF trucks.