He, along with other local villagers, rushed out of their homes.[break]
"At first, I presumed that somebody shot a wild boar that had suddenly appeared and vanished into the nearby woods only a week ago," Bijay said. "On my way to Kotdanda, from where the bang was heard, I saw plumes of smoke rising up in the sky.
What Bijaya witnessed in Kotdanda was scary. A plane (9N-AEK 1900D) had just crashed there. Dismembered bodies of passengers were scattered all around. The plane was still ablaze. "I could not believe my eyes," Bijay said adding, "It was a dreadful scene."
"He could have been saved"
A man, most probably hurled out of the plane by the force resulting from the explosion, was hanging from a nearby tree. He had injuries all over his face. He had lost several teeth. And, one of his legs was broken and he was bleeding profusely.
The only survivor of the crash, who died later while undergoing treatment at the B & B Hospital, was Niranjan Karmacharya, 36, a resident of Kusunti in Lalipur. Local villagers tried to enquire about the family of Niranjan and other passengers, who were already dead. However, instead of telling the locals about his family, he just pleaded: "Take me to hospital. I want to live."
Local villagers including Bijay brought down Niranjan from the tree. They managed a stretcher. When they were ready to take him to hospital, two policemen, who reached the accident site riding a motorcycle after about 10 minutes, stopped them. "They asked us if we could take responsibility if something goes wrong."
The question raised by the policemen deterred the villagers. "I am feeling a terrible pain in my stomach," Niranjan was crying, literally. "I can survive. Please, take me to hospital immediately." After almost one and a half hours, the villagers decided to defy the policemen´s order. They started rushing him to the hospital.
Around 200 meters from the accident site, Bijay, accompanied by other villagers, in taking the injured to hospital, encountered with three police vans. They asked the police to provide one of the vans to take the injured to hospital. They were denied. "They said they are instructed to reach the accident site," Bijay said. "So, we kept on walking. After walking for almost an hour, we reached Bisankhunarayan temple, some 800 meters from Kotdanda. An ambulance was there. We sent the injured by that ambulance."
Sadly, by the time the ambulance reached the hospital, Niranjan was already dead. "Had he been brought on time to the hospital, chances of his survival would have been higher," a doctor at B & B Hospital, requesting anonymity, told Republica. According to him, Niranjan died of multiple fractures and internal bleeding.
Locals also feel that they could have saved Niranjan had the police cooperated with them. "The police prevented us from taking him to hospital only on the grounds of legal procedures," said an angry Bhawani Puri of Bisankhunarayan-2. "Legal procedures are not important than a human life. Police made a huge mistake by trying to follow unimportant procedures in such a critical condition."
Niranjan´s wife Sharada and elder brother Dr Jagjan Karmacharya were also in the plane. They died on the spot. Dr Karmacharya, probably Nepal´s first vascular surgeon, now based in Florida, the US, had come to Nepal with his American colleague, Natalie Neilan, after attending a conference in Hong Kong. Dr Karmacharya, who holds a U.S. citizenship, has his wife and a son in the US. Niranjan has two sons, Aryan and Sourya.
Like a wounded bird
Raj Kumar Khatri, 20, a resident of Lamatar-7, Lalitpur, was sipping tea with his friends at a local tea shop on Sunday morning when a plane flew barely 200 feet above them. They wondered why the plane had to fly at such a low height. "The plane was limping in the sky like a wounded bird," Khatri said. "It had something like a bamboo baton on its nose. It went on to crash down in Kotdanda in just 10 seconds with a deafening explosion."
What followed were terrible flames. "We saw flames from the tea shop," Khatri said. "We reached there in just 10 minutes. The fire was still not extinguished. No one cared for dousing the fire. We started collecting dead bodies. Police came only afterward."
The wife of Hari Thapa, whose house is the nearest from the site of the crash, fainted due to the loud bang. She regained her consciousness only after half an hour. A piece of the crashed plane had also damaged Thapa´s house. Surrounded by curious onlookers, Thapa was saying, Sunday afternoon, "Do not ask me anything. I am too fatigued. I have not even eaten food today."
Fortunately, not many people were there when the plane crashed. "Had the plane crashed on top of the Kotdanda hill, many locals would have died," said Khatri. Around 100 houses are in Kotdanda settlement, which is a little above the accident site.
Sabina Puri, an eleventh grader at Mahalaxmi Higher Secondary School in Luvu-2, Lalitpur, was in the exam hall when the bang of the crash rocked her school. "The teacher told us it was a plane crash," Sabina said. "I rushed toward Kotdanda skipping my exams. I feared the plane might have crashed over our house."
Sabina could heave a sigh of relief only after learning that the plane caused no damage to her village folks. By the time Sabina reached Kotdanda, hundreds of villagers had already reached there.
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