Sukhoi-30 jet crash: Bodies of missing pilots found

The bodies of Flight Lieutenant Achudev and Squadron Leader Divesh Pankaj have been found Flight Lieutenant Achudev is a native of Pantheerankavu in Kozhikode His father Sahadevan is a retired ISRO employee and currently resides in Thiruvananthapuram The Sukhoi jet went missing around an hour after taking off from the Tezpur IAF base on May 23

The bodies of the two missing pilots of Indian Air Force's Sukhoi-30 MKI fighter jet, which crashed near the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border last week, have been found.

Keralite Flight Lieutenant Achudev and Chandigarh native Squadron Leader Divesh Pankaj's bodies were recovered from dense forests near the Arunachal border, eight days after the incident.

Flight Lieutenant Achudev's (25) body was found in the search operation conducted on Tuesday night, the Air Force officials informed his relatives. The youth's parents have been at the IAF base in Tezpur for the last few days. It is understood that the body would be brought home soon.

Achudev is a native of Pantheerankavu in Kozhikode and is the son of Sahadevan and Jayasree from Vallikunnuparambil. Sahadevan is a retired ISRO employee and the family currently resides in Thiruvananthapuram.

The wreckage of the fighter jet, which went missing on May 23, was found on May 26 through an aerial recce, in the dense forest, 60 kms from Tezpur. The plane's black box was recovered by the search team on Saturday, from near the crash site.

The Sukhoi-30 jet, with two pilots on board, went missing around an hour after taking off from the Tezpur IAF base at 10:30 am on May 23. The plane, which was a routine training sortie, lost radar and radio contact around 60 km north of the airbase.