Homi Bhabha to Ajit Pawar: Political heavyweights, prominent figures who died in air tragedies

New Delhi: Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and four other persons were killed in an aircraft crash on Wednesday morning, bringing back the memories of other major crashes in which political heavyweights and prominent figures lost their lives.

The incident occurred when the plane carrying NCP leader Pawar (66) and others was trying to land in Pune's Baramati area.

Here is a list of the top politicians and prominent figures who lost their lives in air tragedies:

• Homi Bhabha (1966) India's pioneering nuclear physicist Homi Jehangir Bhabha died in a tragic crash aboard Air India Flight 101 on January 24, 1966. The plane crashed into Mont Blanc in the Swiss Alps due to a miscommunication with the Geneva air traffic control.

• Sanjay Gandhi (1980) Congress leader and son of then prime minister Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi died in a tragic crash on June 23, 1980. Attempting aerial stunts in a Delhi Flying Club aircraft near the Safdarjung Airport, the plane lost control and crashed.

• Madhavrao Scindia (2001) Senior Congress leader Madhavrao Scindia, himself a former civil aviation minister, died on September 30, 2001 in a plane crash en route a political rally in Kanpur. The 10-seater private aircraft crashed due to poor weather conditions in Uttar Pradesh.

• GMC Balayogi (2002) Lok Sabha Speaker and Telugu Desam Party leader G M C Balayogi died in a chopper crash on March 3, 2002, when a private helicopter carrying him from Bhimavaram in the West Godavari district crashed into a pond near Kaikalur in the Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh.

• Cyprian Sangma (2004) Meghalaya's Rural Development Minister Cyprian Sangma and nine others, who were heading from Guwahati to Shillong on a Pawan Hans helicopter, were killed when the chopper crashed near the Barapani lake, just 20 km from the state capital, on September 22, 2004.

• K S Sowmya (2004) Famous South Indian actress K S Sowmya, popular as Soundarya, lost her life in an air crash on April 17, 2004. The "Sooryavansham" actress was flying from Bengaluru to Karimnagar with her brother at the time of the crash.

• O P Jindal and Surender Singh (2005) Industrialist and Haryana minister Om Prakash Jindal lost his life in a helicopter crash in 2005 along with Agriculture Minister Surender Singh. Their chopper was en route Chandigarh from Delhi when it crashed in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur.

• Y S Reddy (2009) Then chief minister of Andhra Pradesh Y S Rajasekhara Reddy (2009), popularly known as YSR, died on September 2, 2009, when his Bell 430 helicopter crashed in the dense Nallamala forest due to bad weather.

• Dorjee Khandu (2011) Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu and four others were killed on April 30, 2011, when a helicopter carrying them from Tawang to Itanagar crashed in the West Kameng district of the state.

• CDS General Bipin Rawat (2021) India's first Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat, died in a helicopter crash on December 8, 2021. The incident occurred near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu while he was en route from Sulur to Wellington with his wife and 11 others.

• Vijay Rupani (2025) Former Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani died in a plane crash in Ahmedabad on June 12, 2025. All but one of the 242 passengers and crew on board the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner (AI171) and more than 20 persons, including MBBS students on the ground, were killed in the aircraft crash.