Over 10 days since an Indian Navy MiG-29K crashed in the Arabian Sea off the Goan coast, the body of its pilot, Nishant Singh, has been recovered from the seabed.
“Indian Navy has recovered the body of the missing MiG-29K pilot Commander Nishant Singh on the seabed 70 metres below water. It has been found 30 miles off Goa coast after extensive search. The aircraft had crashed on Nov 26 while operating over Arabian Sea,” Indian Navy officials told ANI.
A two-seat trainer variant of the MiG-29KUB, the fighter was being operated from the INS Vikramaditya aircraft carrier. The aircraft went missing on the evening of November 26.
While the Navy recovered debris of the aircraft on November 29, search teams were unable to find the body of its pilot. Altogether, nine warships and 14 aircraft, as well as fast interceptor craft, were deployed to locate the pilot.
Tragically, Commander Singh had only just gotten married six months prior. In May, the letter he wrote to his commanding officer inviting him to his wedding went viral.
MiG-29K pilot Commander Nishant Singh’s remains have been located in the Arabian Sea. His humour-laden letter titled "permission to bite the bullet" to his CO seeking approval to get married made me emotional.
— Shalini Singh Sengar (@Maverickmusafir) December 7, 2020
Om Shanti pic.twitter.com/hvls00NrLh
In the humour-laden tongue-in-cheek letter titled “Permission to bite the bullet” Singh wrote that he had successfully completed “three years of extensive SCTT: Survivability and Compatibility Testing Trials” with his fiancée and sought approval to “willingly sacrifice myself in absolute peacetime, completely outside of the line of duty and follow you and many other brave men into this graveyard spiral of matrimony”.
This was the fourth accident of the MiG-29K/KUB fighter since 2018. It took place after the INS Vikramaditya participated in the Malabar sea exercises with the navies of the US, Japan and Australia.
