Rescuers have reportedly recovered 17 bodies from the wreckage of the Tara Airlines plane that crashed in Nepal’s mountainous Mustang district on Sunday with 22 people on board. Among the 22 people, four were Indians who were of the same family and identified as Ashok Kumar Tripathy, his wife Vaibhavi Bandekar Tripathy, and their two children, Dhanush and Ritika.
As per media reports, the rescue team members are surveying the crashed area for the other passengers as well. Nepal army stated that the cracked pieces of the plane were found at 14,500 ft in Sano Sware Bhir of Thasang in the Mustang district of northwest Nepal. The Turboprop Twin Otter 9N- AET plane operated by Tara Air got lost ground contact as soon as it took off from Pokhara on Sunday. The Canadian-built plane was bound to Jomsom which is a popular tourist destination in central Nepal. The plane was supposed to land at 10: 20 PM but lost contact from 11 AM onwards.
According to the air traffic controller, it was noticed that an unfamiliar sound was heard in Ghasa nearby Jomsom. Subsequently, a helicopter was also sent to the areas surrounding Lete Pass where it was last contacted. Mustang is a beautiful place in the Kali Gandaki valley of the Himalayan region in western Nepal and it means “Land beyond the Himalayas”. The name has been derived from the Tibetan term- Muntan meaning fertile plain and the region is mostly dry and arid.
