Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari attended the funeral held at the Vidya Pratishthan ground, around 100 km from Pune. Several senior leaders cutting across party lines were present to pay their final respects to the 66-year-old Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief
Pic/PTI
The last rites of Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, who died in a plane crash, were performed with full state honours on Thursday at Baramati in Pune district.
Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari and senior leaders attend funeral
Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari attended the funeral held at the Vidya Pratishthan ground, around 100 km from Pune. Several senior leaders cutting across party lines were present to pay their final respects to the 66-year-old Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde were also among those present, along with Pawar’s wife Sunetra Pawar and sons Parth and Jay. His cousin Supriya Sule and NCP working president Praful Patel also attended.
Thousands gather as mortal remains brought from Katewadi
As Pawar’s mortal remains, wrapped in the national flag, were brought from his native Katewadi village to the funeral venue, thousands of supporters gathered, raising slogans of "Ajit Dada amar rahe".
Sons Parth and Jay light funeral pyre
Among those who placed floral wreaths were Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, BJP president Nitin Nabin, Devendra Fadnavis, Union minister Ramdas Athawale, Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, former Union minister Sushilkumar Shinde and Andhra Pradesh minister Nara Lokesh.
Pawar’s sons Parth and Jay lit the funeral pyre.
Earlier in the day, his body was taken from the Punyashlok Ahilyadevi Hospital in Baramati, where it had been kept overnight, to his village before the final journey.
ADR registered; black box of crashed Learjet recovered
Ajit Pawar and four others were killed when the chartered aircraft they were travelling in crashed barely 200 metres from the edge of the tabletop airstrip at Baramati. The other victims were pilot Captain Sumit Kapoor, co-pilot Captain Shambhavi Pathak, personal security officer Vidip Jadhav and flight attendant Pinky Mali. Hospital authorities said their bodies have been handed over to their families.
Police have registered an accidental death report (ADR) in connection with the crash. The government has said the aircraft had been cleared to land after a go-around due to poor visibility but failed to give a read-back to air traffic control before bursting into flames near the runway edge.
The Civil Aviation Ministry on Thursday confirmed that the black box of the Learjet aircraft — comprising the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder — has been recovered.
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