The Air India flight crashed into the sea after a mid-air bomb explosion in what was a failed assassination attempt on Chinese premier Zhou En Lai.
1.30 pm: April 11, 1955.
Air India aircraft Kashmir Princess was readying for departure at Hong Kong's Kai Tak airport. The aircraft had done a scheduled passenger flight from Mumbai to Hong Kong the previous night, but for its next leg, the Princess had been chartered for a private flight by the Chinese government because China did not have long distance aircraft.
The eight-member Indian crew were responsible for flying 11 members of a Chinese delegation including Premier Zhou En Lai to Jakarta, Indonesia for a conference.
The Bandung Afro-Asian conference was being attended by prominent Asian leaders including then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and was a precursor to the Non Aligned Movement.
When the passengers boarded, Zhou En Lai was not among them. In fact, no senior Chinese members took the flight. Only junior level staff, two Polish and one Vietnamese journalists came aboard.
Pilot Captain D K Jatar took off in the afternoon with Co-Pilot M C Dikshit in the Lockheed 794A aircraft. The crew included Flight Navigator J C Pathak, Flight Engineer A S Karnik and Stewardess Gloria Evan Berry.
An hour before landing in Jakarta, a bomb exploded in the aircraft causing a fire which spread rapidly.
Captain Jatar, an experienced pilot who had flown Nehru several times and served as J R D Tata's co-pilot in the past, had no option but to employ an emergency sea landing when the aircraft was at 18,000 feet.
'The plane crashed into the South China Sea. It broke into three parts -- cockpit, cabin and tail. The cabin sank immediately. Three survivors, all crew members, were either in the cockpit or the crew,' wrote Steve Tsang in the China Quarterly published by the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Captain Jatar and Gloria Berry displayed exceptional courage and dedication in the face of danger till their last breath.
According to the book Kashmir Princess by survivor A S Karnik, Captain Jatar's body was found strapped to his pilot's chair with his hands on the controls when the cockpit was discovered 21 days after the crash.
Gloria Berry, just 23 and the only stewardess on the flight, fearlessly continued to help passengers put on life vests till the last moment.
Captain Jatar and Gloria Berry were awarded the Ashok Chakra, India's highest gallantry award in peacetime for conspicuous bravery. They were the first civilians to receive the honour. President Dr Rajendra Prasad presented the award to their next of kin on Republic Day 1956.
The remaining crew of the Kashmir Princess was rescued from the sea and also awarded the Ashok Chakra.
Investigations into the crash were led by none other than the legendary R N Kao, who later founded RA&W. Kao spent months travelling through China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines, and presented his report to Zhou En Lai in Beijing.
'In a detailed briefing, Kao told En Lai how his investigation had led him to Chou Chu. A Taiwanese national working as a member of the ground maintenance crew of the Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company, Chu had agreed to place a time bomb -- a weapon of choice in those days -- in the Kashmir Princess. In return, he was promised a reward of 600,000 Hong Kong dollars,' wrote Anusha Nandkumar and Sandeep Saket in The War That Made R&AW.
'The mastermind behind the plot was Chiang Kaishek, an ousted Chinese leader, who had gone on to become the ruler of Taiwan. Kaishek was plotting to kill Zhou En Lai, and when it was publicly known that he would be taking a chartered flight from Hong Kong to attend the Bandung Conference, he made his move. The Kashmir Princess crash was the result of this ongoing political rivalry between China and Taiwan,' Nandkumar and Saket wrote.
En Lai already had information about this plan and thereby escaped being killed. He only flew out to Rangoon, now Yangon, to meet Nehru on April 14 before traveling to Indonesia for the conference.
The man who had placed the bomb had been recruited by the Kuomintang party headed by Chiang Kaishek who was defeated by the Chinese Communist Party in the civil war in 1949 and moved to Taiwan.
M C Dikshit, the last survivor of the Kashmir Princess<?em>, passed away in 2022.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
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