Six days after a 28-year-old Flight Lieutenant Siddharth Yadav lost his life in a twin-seater Jaguar aircraft crash near Jamnagar, in Gujarat, Kavita Gadgil, mother of the late Flight Lieutenant Abhijit Gadgil, has called the fatal crash a “state-sanctioned violence against our own.”

Gadgil lost his life in a MiG-21 crash at Suratgarh in Rajasthan on September 17, 2001. Gadgil’s death and his family’s subsequent battle demanding justice while raising concerns over the aging fighter aircraft was an inspiration for the Bollywood movie Rang De Basanti, starring Aamir Khan and Soha Ali Khan.

Advertisement

In a post on Facebook, Kavita demanded the grounding of the aging British-French supersonic jet attack aircraft, which found its way to the IAF in 1979.

“Dear Citizens of India, Another young man is gone,” the post started. “Flight Lieutenant Siddharth Yadav. Not martyred in war. Not killed in combat. But lost in a 46-year-old Jaguar jet that should have been grounded long before he was born. He died flying an aircraft that the rest of the world retired decades ago.”

“An aircraft that, like the MiG-21, continues to haunt our skies, claiming the lives of our brightest and bravest, not because of enemy action, but because of our own apathy,” she went on to add.

Speaking about her son’s death, the 75-year-old wrote that since 2001, over 340 Indian Air Force aircraft have crashed and more than 50 pilots have died.

Adding that the numbers were horrific and the silence around them even worse, Kavita wrote, “And still, we carry on. No accountability. No reform. No outrage.”

Kavita said that they (public) only get advice from ministers and bureaucrats who speak loftily of innovation and “deep tech” revolutions. “Who blames young entrepreneurs and dreamers for not doing enough. While their own machinery, the PSUs, the defence research organisations, the state apparatus, continues to fail our armed forces, year after year.”

“We talk of becoming a global power. We demand respect on the world stage. But we send our officers into ancient aircraft, patched-up machines flying on borrowed time and borrowed parts. And we call it valour. It is not valour. It is violence. State-sanctioned violence against our own,” the post continued.

The establishment gave the recently engaged Yadav a coffin masquerading as a cockpit while he was building a life, a heartbroken Kavita said, “I do not want your condolences. I want you to remember. To rage. To demand better. Do not salute their coffins and forget them by next week’s headlines. Do not reduce these boys to photo ops and patriotic hashtags. They deserved better. We owe them better.’

“Do not wait for the next crash to care. Because if we do not act, another mother will be writing this letter. Another home will be draped in a flag. Another boy will never come back. And another nation will shrug, and move on,” the post concluded.

Following the Jaguar crash, a court of inquiry was ordered by the Air Force authorities. “The pilots faced a technical malfunction and initiated ejection, avoiding harm to the airfield and local population,” the IAF wrote in a post on X.