8 politicians who died in tragic accidents

Union Minister Gopinath Munde passed away in a road accident on Tuesday.

Munde is not the first politician to have met a tragic end.

Here's a list of Indian politicians who lost their lives in accidents

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Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Dorjee Khandu was killed April 30, 2011, when a helicopter carrying him and four other people from Tawang to Itanagar crashed in a deep forested area.

Khandu’s helicopter lost contact 20 minutes after it took off as it approached Sela Pass 13,000 feet above sea level.

Bad weather is said to have added to complexity of the navigation in an area which is known to be challenging to pilots. 

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Former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy died when his Bell 430 helicopter crashed in a dense forest while flying to a village in Chitoor district on September 3, 2009.

The helicopter carrying YSR, two of his staff and two pilots went missing in pouring rain over the Naxal and tiger-infested Nalamalla forests. 

The then CM left Hyderabad on a six-seater Bell chopper at 8.35am accompanied by his secretary and chief security officer. After 9.27am, radio contact was lost with the helicopter.

His body was traced 27 hours after the helicopter went missing.

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O P Jindal, the then Haryana power minister and a noted industrialist, and state agriculture minister Surendra Singh were killed when the chopper carrying them developed a technical snag and went down near Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh on March 31, 2005.

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Lok Sabha Speaker and Telugu Desam Party leader G M C Balayogi died on March 3, 2002 when a private helicopter in which he was travelling crashed while trying to make an emergency landing at Kovvadalanka village in Kolleru area of Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh. 

His assistant secretary, Sathi Raju, and pilot, G V Menon, were also killed.

Balayogi was in a Bell 206 helicopter. An official probe ruled that the crash was caused when the pilot, unable to continue due to poor visibility, mistakenly landed in a pond thinking it was land.

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Madhavrao Scindia, a senior Congress leader and a former Union cabinet minister, was killed in a Cessna aircraft crash on September 30, 2001 while travelling to Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh to address a public rally.

Six others traveling with him were also killed when the private plane crashed on the outskirts of Manipuri district, 172 km from Kanpur. 

Scindia was traveling in a 10-seater C-90, which took off from Delhi. The pilot lost contact with the ATC, Delhi, was not in contact with the ATC, Lucknow. Bad weather, coupled with a possible cloudburst, probably caused the crash.

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Congress leader Rajesh Pilot was killed in a road accident at Bhandana in his parliamentary constituency Dausa on June 11, 2000. He was 57. He was reportedly in the driver’s seat when his car collided head-on with a Rajasthan State Road Transport bus. He battled for life for the next 45 minutes before being declared dead by doctors at the hospital.

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Sanjay Gandhi, the younger son of then prime minister Indira Gandhi, died when the glider he was flying crashed soon after take off from Safdarjung airport in Delhi on June 23, 1980.