On July 22, 2016, an An-32 aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) tasked for a routine courier flight took off from the airbase at Tambaram, near Chennai, at 0830 hours with 23 passengers and six crew members onboard. The aircraft was headed for Port Blair, capital of Andaman and Nicobar, 1,375 km away and was to land there at 1130 hours. The last radio call received from the aircraft was at 0845 indicating the operations thus far were normal. However, when the aircraft was around 250 km from Tambaram and had reached cruising altitude, the controller at Chennai radar is reported to have observed the aircraft to be rather suddenly doing a sharp left turn with rapid loss of height. As of August 20, despite the massive search the aircraft or its wreckage has not yet been located. What has compounded the problem further is the fact that there was no distress message from the aircraft and the emergency locator transmitter has also been non-functional. There were some fleeting reports that transmission from the equipment had been picked up, but this has not been authenticated. What then could have gone wrong with the mission?

To begin with, the flight to Port Blair was not at all a strenuous exercise and involved merely flying along the designated route, most of it on autopilot. The captain of the aircraft and the crew were well qualified and sufficiently experienced for the mission. Hence aircrew error as a contributory factor can be ruled out. Besides, weather conditions prevailing over the Bay of Bengal at that time were not significantly adverse and it is unlikely to have contributed to the disaster. There are however other possibilities that could have led to the disappearance of the An-32. One possible cause could be structural failure which might have resulted in separation of the left wing that made the aircraft go into a steep spiral with rapid loss of height. This could happen if a fire had developed in the left engine that was not extinguished by the integral fire extinguisher. In this situation, there is little that the crew could have done to regain control of the aircraft.

The IAF in the past has lost an An-12 and an Avro for similar reasons. In both cases, fire developed on the engine that led to separation of the wing. However, if such a catastrophe had struck the An-32, parts of the aircraft would been floating on the surface of the sea and would have been spotted by the ships or aircraft deployed for the rescue operations.

Another possibility is that the disaster that struck the aeroplane was sudden which completely overwhelmed the crew and left them with no time to even make a distress call. Such a situation can arise if there is powerful explosion onboard leading to disintegration of the aircraft in flight. Could the aircraft have been sabotaged by anti-national elements? This possibility would have to be carefully examined by the investigating agency. In 1988, a US-built Hercules C-130 aircraft carrying Pakistan President General Zia-ul-Haque, crashed at Bhawalpur in a similar fashion. In this case, the aircraft was apparently sabotaged by factions inimical to the Pakistani President.

In the case of the An-32, the possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out. Given that IAF Station Pathankot recently suffered a terrorist strike with tacit support from across the Western border, could Air Force Station Tambaram also have fallen prey to a covert operation by the intelligence agencies of the enemy? After all, courier flight from Tambaram to Port Blair is undertaken as per a fixed routine making it easy for enemy agents to execute their plan to sabotage the aircraft. Besides, as compared to the sensitive areas in the North, military establishments in South India present soft targets for such operations by the enemy.

While the massive search continues, the mystery behind the disappearance of the An-32 acquired a new twist that has only deepened the mystery. Forest officials said that Air Force Station Suryalanka in Guntur district, received a phone call about “debris of an aircraft” in Sarugudu forest area. The search has now been extended to the dense forests near Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh after tribals in the area alerted officials of objects that looked the remains of a plane. Is there a possibility that the aircraft was hijacked, the crew killed and the aircraft crashed in the forests of Andhra Pradesh?

Unless the wreckage of the An-32 is located and the black box containing the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder is recovered, the IAF will not be able to unravel the mystery of the missing An-32. At this point in time, one can only speculate on the possible cause of the crash.