Shambhu (Rajpura), September 6
“The clouds opened and poured fire instead of rain,” explained a terrified car driver, an eyewitness to the MiG crash that left a deep crater in this sleepy village near Rajpura. It was a cloudy Tuesday morning when an unusual sound from the skies jolted the villagers out of their slumber. They ran out of their homes and were horrified to see the smouldering aircraft wreckage strewn in the fields.

Iqbal Singh of Baprour village was on a morning walk when he saw a huge ball of fire hurtling towards a nearby field with speed.

“Before I could react, there was a deafening blast and I ducked behind the standing paddy crop in fear, wondering if it was an attack from the aliens,” he said. “The aircraft was reduced into ashes within seconds,” he recalled. Another witness Mohinder Singh said he was sipping tea when he saw “the clouds spit fire.”

Hundreds of villagers and anxious residents of Rajpura, who heard the thunderous sound, rushed to the accident site. A nearby teacher Prem Chand said the first thought that crossed his mind was if the pilot had escaped unharmed. “It is hard to forget his terrified face,” he claimed. He said not once did he think about the loss to his standing crop.

With the police and the IAF cordoning the crash site, the villagers watched the burning wreckage from a distance. Among them were two young boys. “My uncle was in the Indian Air Force. He never flew a plane as he was part of the ground staff.

“But I will surely fly an aircraft one day... Such incidents cannot dampen my spirit,” said one of them, sounding rather mature for his age.