Defence spokesman Col NN Joshi told AIR that single seater MIG -21 aircraft had taken off from Srinagar airfield and was on a routine training sortie.
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Though the pilot ejected safely from the fighter jet, the paddy fields spread across several hectares of land were destroyed by Armymen who landed copters there and launched a search operation around the site after the crash, said the eyewitnesses. However, the pilot and co-pilot had a miraculous escape, the official said.
“A MiG-21 Bison fighter aircraft crashed at 11 a.m.in Soibug area of Badgam district”, a defence spokesman stated in Srinagar.
MiG-21 crashed Monday in Indian-controlled Kashmir, officials said.
Earlier this year, two Indian military troopers were killed after a helicopter they were flying in crashed.
The pilot of the Mig-21 Bison of IAF managed to eject safely and was subsequently helped by the villagers before being rescued by the search parties.
A 2012 agreement to buy 126 Rafale fighters from France’s Dassault Aviation has stalled due to a dispute over the assembly of the aircraft in India.
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But senior air force officers have privately said they were unimpressed with the aircraft, with one former fighter pilot saying the plane was “so late it is obsolete”.
