As the last rites were performed of IAF Squadron Leader Abhinav Choudhary, who died in a MiG-21 crash in the Moga district of Punjab on Thursday, his father, Satendra, made an emotional appeal to the government to discontinue the ageing Soviet-era fighter jet.
“I lost everything I had...the government should discontinue the obsolete aircraft,” Times of India reported him as saying.
“I have lost my son...I don’t want others to lose theirs. I request the government with folded hands to discontinue them,” he said.
Choudhary, 28, crashed during a night combat training sortie late on Thursday night.
Earlier on Saturday morning, his body, wrapped in the tricolour, was taken by IAF officials from the Hindon airbase in Ghaziabad to his family residence at Gangasagar in Meerut where his inconsolably crying family members, including father Satendra Chaudhary, mother Satya Chaudhary, wife Sonika Ujjaval and sister Mudrika, received it.
After keeping the body briefly at the Meerut residence for people to bid the last farewell to the martyred pilot, the IAF officials began the drive for the pilot's ancestral village.
Though the IAF had made arrangements for family members to be taken to Baghpat in a separate vehicle, the pilot's distraught father insisted upon accompanying the body in the same vehicle.
On the way to the village, the locals stood along the road holding tricolour in their hands to see the braveheart pilot one last time after his life was cut short in the crash. The body reached the village at 11.30 am.
Abhinav had joined the service in 2014 and was currently stationed at Pathankot Airbase.
Retiring a Soviet-era fighter
The MiG-21 crash in which Sqn Ldr Choudhary was killed was the third accident this year. Over 400 MiG-21s have crashed since 1971-72, killing over 200 pilots and 50 civilians on the ground.
Calls to retire the MiG-21 have rung out for years, with some dubbing the aircraft the “flying coffin” due to the number of pilots that have died flying it. In March, an IAF Group Captain was killed in a MiG-21 accident while that took place while it was taking off for a combat training mission.
Having first flown in 1955, the MiG-21 continues to serve in the IAF, as well as in countries like China and Pakistan in the form of its Chinese duplicate, the Chengdu J-7.
Its replacement was originally intended to be the indigenously-developed HAL Light Combat Aircraft, Tejas, whose design and development was commissioned in the 1980s to replace the ageing MiG-21. However, delays in the development and induction of the Tejas have led to the MiG-21 serving years past its initially planned retirement.
The MiG-21 Bison in service with the IAF may be the most advanced variant of its make, having received several overhauls including upgrades to both its radar and its missiles. In November 2020, the IAF received what it hoped would be the last overhauled MiG-21 Bison from HAL
The Bison earned accolades in India following the dogfight that took place after the 2019 Balakot airstrike, when Pakistani fighter jets conducted their own retaliatory strike on Indian soil. The IAF claimed a MiG-21 piloted by Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman shot down a much more advanced Pakistani F-16. Pakistan denies the claim, with one of its fighters having shot down Abhinandan’s own aircraft. While Pakistan took the Indian pilot into its custody, it later released him in a gesture to ease tensions between the two nuclear-armed nations.
With inputs from PTI
