An Indian Air Force cargo plane with five crew members crashed in the state of Madhya Pradesh on Friday. None of the crew survived.
The plane, a four-engine C-130J aircraft named Hercules that was obtained last year, went down near the village of Karauli, 72 miles west of the Gwalior air base. The crew were conducting a training session, the Associated Press reported.
"This is absolutely a shocking incident," said Prakash Javadekar, spokesman for the main opposition party Bharatiya Janata, the AP reported.
The cause of the crash is not yet known, Group Captain Gerard Galway said according to the AP. An inquiry will focus on the plane's recovered black box
"The aircraft was airborne from Agra at 10 a.m. for a routine flying training mission," an IAF statement obtained by The Times of India said. "A court of inquiry has been ordered to investigate into the cause of the accident."
Air Force officials are stumped that the plane, bought with six other C-130 J's from a U.S. company three years ago, crashed.
The incident was "bizarre," one IAF pilot told The Times of India. The pilot suggested that maybe a fire broke out on the plane or the crew was harmed.
"The Hercules is such a sturdy aircraft it doesn't meet with such kinds of accidents," Javadekar said, the AP reported. "The government needs to own responsibility for this state of affairs."
The crash is a major blow to the IAF as it attempts to modernize its military fleet.
"After years of delay, the fleet is undergoing expansion in critical airlift capabilities," Sameer Patil, a security expert from the think-tank Indian Council on Global Relations, told the AP. "Hence, a loss such as this is particularly worrisome."
Friday's crash comes a month after a destroyer under construction in Mumbai suffered a gas leak and killed a navy commander, the AP reported.
