Sometimes history changes course mid-air

Every air crash doesn't change the history of a nation or a people, but in India, where the political class sees institutions and processes - the backbone of democracy - as irritants, tragedies in the air often leave us with conspiracy theories and questions that refuse to go away.
The biggest question mark of them all has always hung over the August 18, 1945 air crash that killed Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. What if that plane hadn't crashed, Indians continue to wonder.
So too the June 23, 1980 plane crash that killed Sanjay Gandhi. The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty - and India's history - changed forever when Sanjay's Pitts S-2A aerobatic biplane nosedived while performing a double loop at Safdarjung airport in Delhi. It was to be a turning point for the Congress party and for India. Else, Sanjay might one day have been prime minister, Rajiv would have remained in his job flying planes, Sonia would never have become party president, Manmohan Singh would not be prime minister and Rahul would not be heir-apparent.
On October 3, 2001, Congress leader Madhavrao Scindia's Cessna C-90 plane got caught in a storm cloud, eventually breaking up into many pieces over Mainpuri in UP. Again, Scindia's untimely death arguably changed history, snatched from India a man who might one day have been PM.
In 1966, an Air India Boeing exploded near Mont Blanc in Switzerland, killing India's top scientist Homi J Bhabha. The crash remains a mystery and many allege that the CIA had a hand in Bhabha's death.
06/09/09 Shobhan Saxena/Times of India

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Sep 2009