Jharkhand: Trainer Aircraft Goes Missing; NDRF Joins Search Ops

The aircraft, reportedly a Cessna 152 -- owned by flying school Alchemist Aviation -- took off from Jamshedpur's Sonari aerodome around 11 am with a pilot and trainee on board.

East Singhbhum's Deputy Commissioner Ananya Mittal told news agency PTI that the aircraft was last located near Nimdih in Seraikela-Kharswan districts.

SEARCH OPERATION LAUNCHED, NDRF JOINS IN

Soon after the trainer aircraft went missing, a massive search operation was launched, officials said.

Deputy Commissioner Ananya Mittal said that the administrations of the East Singhbhum and Serikela-Kharswan districts, along with the police and the Forest Department were searching for the aircraft.

He added that searches were also being conducted in the adjoining district of Purulia as well.

The search was expanded to the Chandil dam at night after locals claimed that they saw the debris of the aircraft in the reservoir.

"Nothing concrete has been found yet but a search operation is being conducted in the damn," Seraikela-Kharswan SP Mukesh Kumar Lunayat had told news agency PTI.

A National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team on Wednesday joined the search operations in the Seraikela-Kharswan district to trace the two-seater aircraft that went missing on Tuesday.

Deputy Commissioner of the district, Ravi Shankar Shukla, said that a six-member NDRF team joined the search operations in Chandil dam this morning but nothing was found yet.

The aviation company -- Alchemist Aviation -- which owned the missing aircraft, revealed that one of the missing persons was Subrodeep.

Senior officials are supervising and taking regular stock of the massive search operations that are being conducted in various areas besides Chandil dam to locate the missing trainer aircraft.