What happened
On June 13, an Indian Air Force AN-32 transport aircraft crashed while landing at the Jorhat Air Force Station in Assam, killing five personnel: Squadron Leader Prashant Singh, Flight Lieutenant Shubham Kumar, Sergeant Jitendra Sharma, and Agniveer Vayu Khemaram Kumawat and Danish Alam — two members of the Agniveer scheme, the four-year contract scheme introduced as a cost-efficient alternative to regular military enlistment, deployed here on a plane older than most of their parents. India procured 125 AN-32s from the Soviet Union between 1984 and 1991; the aircraft has since served as the IAF's tactical workhorse and, intermittently, a cautionary pattern. The 2019 AN-32 that took off from this same Jorhat airbase vanished over Arunachal Pradesh — the wreckage was found a week later with 13 dead. The 2016 AN-32 was lost near the Andaman Islands. The 1986 AN-32 disappeared en route from Muscat. This time, the plane did not reach the mountainous terrain. It crashed in the flat part, on landing. The co-pilot survived; a court of inquiry has been constituted to determine the cause. The phrase 'court of inquiry constituted' has appeared after every AN-32 incident in the type's four-decade Indian career. The aircraft's replacement has been under discussion for approximately as long.