A video of one of the victims, Sonu Jaiswal, who was live-streamed from the plane seconds before the disaster, went viral in India in the hours following Nepal’s deadliest plane crash in thirty years. He was one of four friends traveling to Nepal from Ghazipur, India, who took a flight from Kathmandu to Pokhara.
The Pokhara airport area can be seen from the fateful jet in the video, with people inside unaware they were only seconds from from death. It’s likely that none of the 72 passengers on board survived.
Before the cameraman turned and grinned, the video shows the plane floating gracefully over honeycombed buildings on a sepia field.
He then turned it over so that the other fliers could see it. The cameras kept filming as massive flames and smoke quickly filled the screen. Before the video finishes, a scream can be heard along with the roar of the engine and the sound of glass breaking.
Reporters were informed by Sonu Jaiswal’s relatives and friends that they had seen the video on his Facebook page and had verified its legitimacy.
According to Mukesh Kashyap, a friend of Jaiswal’s, “Sonu was doing [a live broadcast] when the plane crashed in a canyon near the Seti River.”
According to local journalist Shashikant Tiwari, who works for the BBC, Kashyap showed him the footage on Jaiswal’s private Facebook profile. How Jaiswal used the airplane to access the internet is unknown. Abhishek Pratap Shah, a former member of parliament from Nepal, told the Indian news outlet NDTV that rescuers pulled the cell phone from the plane’s debris where the video was located.
“A friend of mine obtained the video clip from a police officer. The record is legitimate, Mr. Shah told NDTV.
The footage, which could aid in the investigation into the workplace disaster, has not received any confirmation from or comments from Nepalese authorities.
