M A I N   N E W S

Plane crash toll mounts to 56

PATNA, July 18 (PTI) — With one more body extricated from the wreckage today, the toll in Monday’s Alliance Air crash here mounted to 56 even as 54 bodies were identified and handed over to relatives for cremation.

Official sources said among the bodies of those extricated, 51 were on board the plane, while five others were on ground when the ill-fated flight cd 7412 from Calcutta to Delhi en route Patna and Lucknow, crashed on a row of government flats at Gardanibag minutes before it was to land at the Patna airport yesterday.

District Magistrate, Amit Khare told pti that the relatives of those killed had come from Calcutta, Delhi, Chennai and other places and received the bodies of their near and dear ones.

Among those killed on board, bodies of 49 have already been despatched after post-mortem examination while two others, charred beyond recognition, were yet to be identified, Mr Khare said.

He said the two unidentified bodies were believed to be that of B.B. Shah of NTPC and M. Gupta of Reliance.

Mr Khare said of the seven survivors on board the plane, Rajiv Singh Rana, P.N. Bopanna, Rohit Ranjan and Bharat Rungta, were shifted to aiims and Apollo in New Delhi by a special plane.

Three others, K. Rajgarhia, Pramod Rajgarhia and Prachi Rajgarhia, earlier being treated at a nursing home in Patna, have also been shifted to a hospital in Delhi.

Three among the locals injured in the mishap — Amarendra Kumar Mishra, Brajesh Kumar Mishra, and Mithilesh Kumar — were being treated at a private nursing home here, Mr Khare said.

Meanwhile, Director-General of Civil Aviation H.S. Khola and other officials of the ministry continued on the spot inquiry for the second day today.

According to authorities, the cockpit voice recorder and digital flight data recorder (black box) had already been retrieved and sent for decoding and analysis.

NEW DELHI: Six survivors in the Monday’s plane crash and a woman injured when the plane hit a row of houses near the Patna airport have been brought here on Tuesday for treatment.

Pramod Rajgahria, a UK-based surgeon, and his two children Ketan and Prachi, were brought here by a special rescue plane and were driven straight from the airport to Apollo Hospital. The three were on mobile ventilators.