LUCKNOW: Minutes before the ill-fated Yeti Airlines plane crashed in Nepal’s Pokhara, four of its passengers, all residents of Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh, were live on Facebook to share their experience on the flight.
‘Mauj Kar Di’ (it’s real fun) shouts one of them excitedly as the 1.30-minute video shows the Pokhara town below.
The phone camera also pans on one of them, Sonu Jaiswal (29). After 58 seconds, however, the video shows aircraft taking a sharp turn towards the left and then crashing and turning into flames. As the phone camera continued to roll, it caught glimpses of towering flames around it for the next 30 seconds.
These four passengers from Baresar in Ghazipur were out of five Indians who died along with 68 other passengers in the crash. Sonu Jaiswal (29), Anil Rajbhar (28), Vishal Sharma (23), Abhishek Singh Kushwaha (23) had landed in Kathmandu on January 13 and after performing puja at the Pashupatinath temple, were heading for Pokhara for paragliding.
On Sunday, a pall of gloom descended on villages in Baresar and Nonahara area of Ghazipur district the four belonged to. Sonu Jaiswal was a liquor trader while Anil Rajbhar and Abhishek Kushwaha would run Jan Sewa centres at Zahoorabad and Alawalpur in Ghazipur. Vishal Sharma (23) was a finance officer at a two-wheeler agency.
It was Sonu’s FB profile where the video was live, confirmed by his cousin Rajat Jaiswal. “Sonu was on Facebook live after boarding the flight for Pokhara. The live-streaming showed that Sonu and his companions were in a happy mood but all of a sudden flames appeared before the streaming stopped,” he said.
A senior police official said that in the evening they were informed by the Ghazipur DM office about the death of four men from the district in Nepal plane crash. “We formed teams to confirm their identity and it surfaced that the four were from Baresar,” said the officer.
SHO, Baresar, Devendra Pratap Singh, confirmed TOI the identity of the four and added that he visited the house of Anil Rajbhar, and met his father Ramdharas. “He said that the four Anil, Abhishek, Vishal, and Sonu had left for Nepal on January 13 and planned to stay for a week,” Singh said, quoting Ramdharas.
Circle officer, Kasimabad, Balram Singh, said that he along with the SDM visited the places Sonu Jaiswal and Anil Rajbhar in Chak Jainab, Vishal Sharma at Alawalpur Chatti under Baresar police station area and also Abhishek Kushwahah in Dharva village under Nonahara police station to meet their family members. “We assured them all cooperation in bringing back their bodies,” he added.
Abhishek’s elder brother Abhinay said, “In the past three hours, we have received calls from the Nepalese and Indian embassies. We were informed that bodies would reach Delhi on Monday morning.”
Vishal’s parents, three sisters and brother Vishwajeet were in a state of shock after getting the news. Vishwajeet said that they had no clue how they would get the mortal remains for cremation.