It was April 17, 2004. Telugu superstar Soundarya had just boarded a single-engine Cessna 180 from the Jakkur airstrip near Bengaluru in Karnataka. Soundarya, the belle of Telugu cinema and a doctor, had just joined the BJP. She was on her way to Karimnagar in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh to campaign for the BJP. It was 11 am.
Five minutes later, the Cessna burst into a ball of flames and crashed. Soundarya, and her fellow passengers on that ill-fated flight, never made it out. They were all charred to death.
Sowmya Sathyanarayana, popularly known as Soundarya, was only 32 when she died. Soundarya primarily worked in Telugu films apart from Kannada, Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam cinema. She enjoyed widespread fame and recognition after sharing screen space with Amitabh Bachchan in the 1999 Hindi drama Sooryavansham.
At the time of her death, Soundarya was pregnant. She was travelling to Karimnagar with her brother Amarnath, BJP party worker Ramesh Kadam, and pilot Joy Philips, none of whom made it out alive. In fact, there was no identification of the bodies possible since they were all burnt beyond recognition.
Shortly after takeoff, the Cessna 180 aircraft crashed on the campus of the Gandhi Krishi Vigyan Kendra of the University of Agricultural Sciences, near Bengaluru.
Here’s a lowdown on what happened on April 17, 2004
- The aircraft, a Cessna 180, took off from the Jakkur airstrip at 11.05 am.
- Soundarya, pregnant at that time, was travelling with her brother, Amarnath, BJP party worker Ramesh Kadam, and pilot Joy Philips to Karimnagar, then Andhra Pradesh.
- She was on her way to Andhra Pradesh to campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the general elections.
- The aircraft turned west before crashing on the campus of the Gandhi Krishi Vigyan Kendra of the University of Agricultural Sciences.
- It had reached a height of 150 feet (46 m), and, before achieving the required rate of climb speed, took a steep left turn, which led to a stall.
- It caught fire a few minutes into takeoff and crashed into the ground nose down.
- BN Ganapathi, one of the two persons working on the experimental fields of the university, who rushed to the aircraft to save the passengers, said the plane wobbled before the crash.
- SM Krishna, the then Karnataka Chief Minister, and Arun Jaitley, the Union Commerce Minister and then BJP state-in-charge, rushed to Jakkur after the crash. The BJP city unit also called off all its public programmes for the day.
- The then Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, also expressed his sorrow at Soundarya’s untimely death.
Soundarya, a major Telugu superstar, was a crowdpuller for the BJP in the South. She had married a software executive Sridhar in 2003, months before her death.
Soundarya’s death is in headlines now, after 20 years, as a police complaint has been filed in Andhra Pradesh’s Khammam district. The complainant Chittimallu has alleged that Soundarya’s death was not accidental, but a murder linked to a property dispute with Telugu actor Mohan Babu.