This Article is From Mar 29, 2015

2 Navy Officers Who Died in Dornier Crash Cremated With Full Military Honours

Advertisement
Edited by

The bodies of Lt. Kiran Shekhawat and Lt. Abhinav Nagori were recovered from the fuselage of the crashed Dornier aircraft.

Mewat/Udaipur:

Two naval officers who died in an air crash last week were cremated today will full military honours. Lieutenant Kiran Shekhawat and Lieutenant Abhinav Nagori were on a Dornier aircraft which went down on Tuesday night off the Goa coast. Commander Nikhil Kuldip Joshi, who was the pilot of the aircraft, was rescued by fishermen.

The last rites of 27-year-old Lt. Shekhawat - the country's first woman officer to die in the line of duty - was held at her hometown of Mewat in Haryana. Her body was found in the fuselage of the crashed aircraft on Thursday.

She was training to be an Observer - an officer in charge of all sensors on board a surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft. Lt. Shekhawat, who was married to a Navy officer, was part of the contingent of women in the Navy who marched in the Republic Day parade this year.

"We had never stayed together. She was posted in Goa. I was in Kerala... No one can really separate us. We are the same soul," her husband Vivek Chhoker told NDTV.

Lt. Nagori's body was recovered on Friday. He was cremated today in Udaipur in Rajasthan. The 24-year-old had joined the Navy in July 2012 and was training to be a pilot.

Advertisement
12 ships with naval divers and four aircraft were used to search for the wreckage of the plane which crashed during a routine sortie.

The Navy uses around 32 Dornier aircraft for reconnaissance, and search and rescue operations. This is the first Dornier of the Indian Navy to crash since it was inducted into the force in the early 90s. The ill- fated Dornier was carrying out a search and rescue exercise at night when it crashed.
Advertisement
Advertisement