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Congress leader Madhavrao Scindia, 56, died in a plane crash near Mota village in Bhogaon tehsil of Mainpuri district of central Uttar Pradesh on Sunday afternoon.
Scindia was on his way to Kanpur to address a party rally later this evening.
Accompanying him were his private secretary Rupinder Singh, four journalists - Anju Sharma (Hindustan Times), Sanjiv Sinha (Indian Express), Ranjan Jha (Aaj Tak TV channel) and Gopal Bisht (Aaj Tak). The plane was piloted by Raj Gautam.
Ambulance and police personnel who arrived at the spot have recovered seven bodies, all in severely burnt condition, police sources said. No survivors have been reported.
The chartered plane, a 10-seater Cessna C-90 bearing the identifier VTE--F and owned by the Jindal Group, took off from Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi at 1249 hours.
The plane crashed crashed around 85 km from Agra.
The station master of Mota railway station, who was among the few eyewitnesses to the tragedy, told police that he saw a ball of fire falling from the skies onto the fields.
“Evidently, the plane had caught fire while it was still up in the air, so the chances of anybody’s survival were slim to none," Kanpur Divisional Commissioner Rajendra Bhonwal told rediff.com over telephone.
He said, “Air Traffic Control lost contact with the plane about 25 minutes after take off from Delhi, and that is when we were alerted," Bhonwal said. "We swung into action, and found that an air crash had been reported from Mainpuri.
“Since Mota railway station falls on the border of Mainpuri and Farrukhabad districts, I rushed the Farukhabad district superintendent of police to the spot," Bhonwal added.
Special police and medical teams were also been rushed to the spot.
Scindia is the second of the younger breed of Congress leaders to have died within the last 16 months. Rajesh Pilot, it will be remembered, died in June 2000 after the jeep he was driving was involved in a head-on crash with a bus in Rajasthan.
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