4 friends on vacation among 5 Indians on board Nepal plane

The five Indian nationals were among 72 aboard the Yeti Airlines flight YT-691, which crashed into a gorge while on approach to the airport at the tourist town of Pokhara.

Four of the five Indians feared killed in Sunday’s Nepal plane crash were friends who were on a vacation and one of them is believed to have been live on Facebook in the moments before the crash, officials and unverified videos suggested.

Rescue operation is underway after a passenger plane of Yeti Airlines' crashed while landing at the Pokhara airport in Nepal. (PTI)

The five Indian nationals were among 72 aboard the Yeti Airlines flight YT-691, which crashed into a gorge while on approach to the airport at the tourist town of Pokhara. Authorities said they had retrieved the remains of 68 people before they had to call off rescue operations for the day.

“Of the five Indians, four are from the Ghazipur district. They were all friends and went to Nepal on January 13 on a holiday,” said Balram Kumar, circle officer, Kasimabad Police Station.

The Indians on board were identified as Sonu Jaiswal (35), Anil Kumar Rajbhar (27), Abhishek Kushwaha (27), Vishal Sharma (22) — all residents of Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur who were together on a holiday — and Sanjay Jaiswal (26) from Bihar’s Sitamarhi.

Police said Sonu Jaiswal was possibly on a Facebook live seconds before the crash, which helped identify the Indians. A 1-minute 37-second video, which went viral late on Sunday, showed the person holding the phone pointing the camera out from a window seat, showing an approach. At one point, the shot becomes unstable and the vision blacks out before the final moments showing what appeared to be flames with some vegetation close by.

HT could not verify the source of the video or the identity of the people who shot it.

News agency PTI quoted Ajay Kumar Shah, who had met the group in recent days, as saying that the four “were planning to enjoy paragliding”.

Shah, a resident of Sarlahi district in southern Nepal, said he was co-passengers with the group when they arrived from India. “They stayed in Gaushala near Pashupatinath Temple and then in Hotel Discovery Inn in Thamel, before departing to Pokhara,” he said, according to PTI.

External affairs minister S Jaishankar expressed grief over the air crash and said “our thoughts are with the affected families”. “Deeply grieved on hearing about the air crash in Pokhara, Nepal. Our thoughts are with the affected families,” Jaishankar said in a tweet.

Civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia condoled the loss of lives in the plane crash in Nepal and termed it “extremely unfortunate”.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath offered condolences to the families of the deceased and tweeted: “Officials have been instructed to coordinate with the Ministry of External Affairs to make arrangements to bring the mortal remains of the deceased people of Uttar Pradesh to the state.”

People aware of the matter said that Sanjay was studying in Kathmandu and was going to visit his sister in Pokhra.

Eyewitnesses said they rushed to the crash site after hearing a loud explosion.

“There was a loud sound, so I and two-three other people ran to the site where we saw that a plane had crashed. We took some people to the hospital. Some people were buried under the plane and we took them out. There were also some dead bodies in the gorge. We took them out,” news agency ANI quoted a witness Deepak Shahi as saying.

(With inputs from Avinash Kumar in Patna)