In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, the family members of Indian Air Force Pilot, Flight Lieutenant Advitiya Bal, who died in a Mig-21 crash on Thursday, have urged the Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to discard Mig-21 aircraft from the defence fleet to save lives of IAF personnel.
Flight Lieutenant Advitiya Bal of Jammu area was among two pilots of IAF, who died after a twin-seater MiG-21 aircraft crashed in Barmer city of the Indian state of Rajasthan on Thursday.
Uncle of Bal urged the Indian Defence Minister, Rajnath Singh, to immediately ground the Soviet-era fighter jets before they take another life in an accident.
“We have lost everything, we can only appeal to the defence minister to stop using MiG 21 jets before another crash takes away yet another precious life,” Kamaljeet Bal, the uncle of killed flight lieutenant, who is an ex-soldier told reporters.
The demand to discontinue MiG 21 is not new. Such demands have been made in the past also as the fighter aircraft carries a long list of accidents and tragedies since it induction into the IAF. India got its first single-engine MiG-21 in 1963, and it progressively inducted 874 variants of the Soviet-origin supersonic fighters to further its hegemonic designs in the region.
As per Indian media reports, the IAF will be retiring one more squadron of the MiG-21 Bison aircraft by September this year and phase out the remaining fleet by 2025.
