Squadron Leader Prashant Kumar Bundela (14 December 1970 – 19 August 2002) was a

fighter pilot A fighter pilot is a military aviator trained to engage in air-to-air combat, air-to-ground combat and sometimes electronic warfare while in the cockpit of a fighter aircraft. Fighter pilots undergo specialized training in aerial warfare and ...

of the

Indian Air Force The Indian Air Force (IAF) is the air arm of the Indian Armed Forces. Its complement of personnel and aircraft assets ranks third amongst the air forces of the world. Its primary mission is to secure Indian airspace and to conduct aerial w ...

who shot down Pakistan Navy Atlantic over the Rann of Kutch soon after the 1999 Kargil War. He received the prestigious

Vayusena medal The Vayu Sena Medal is a military decoration, usually awarded in peacetime for a job well done in the Indian Air Force. However, it has been granted during times of conflict for acts of gallantry in the face of enemy, though not in the same nu ...

for this operation on 26 January 2000. He died in 2002 in a MiG-21 crash.

Early life

Bundela was born on 14 December 1970 in

Jhunjhunu Jhunjhunu is a city and capital of Jhunjhunu district in the state of Rajasthan. This city is in the northern state of Rajasthan, India and the administrative headquarters of Jhunjhunu District. History Jhunjhunu is a very old and historical ...

, Rajasthan. On 14 December 1991, he was commissioned in the fighter stream and is posted to a Fighter Squadron in the Western Sector.

War Operations

10 August 1999, two IAF MiG-21 interceptor aircraft of No. 45 Squadron took off from the Naliya air base at 11 a.m. to investigate an "unidentified" aircraft at India's side of the border. They identified the intruder as a Pakistani Atlantique reconnaissance aircraft. After a series of maneuvers, they got the clearance to shoot down the Pakistani plane. At 11:17 am IST, Bundela fired an

infrared homing Infrared homing is a passive weapon guidance system which uses the infrared (IR) light emission from a target to track and follow it seamlessly. Missiles which use infrared seeking are often referred to as "heat-seekers" since infrared is radi ...

R-60

air-to-air missile The newest and the oldest member of Rafael's Python family of AAM for comparisons, Python-5 (displayed lower-front) and Shafrir-1 (upper-back) An air-to-air missile (AAM) is a missile fired from an aircraft for the purpose of destroying a ...

which hit the engine on the port side of the plane causing it to burst into flames and hurtle down into the

Kori Creek The Kori Creek is a tidal creek in the Kutch region of the Indian state of Gujarat. It lies just to the west of the Great Rann of Kutch area of India. This region belonging to India is a part of the Indus River Delta, which lies across Gujar ...

wasteland.

Death

On 4 April 2002, Bundela was on a sortie from Adampur to Halwara with Flight Lieutenant S.K. Nayak on a MiG-21 Bison. When they reached somewhere over Jalandhar his aircraft engine began sputtering due to fuel was not being pumped into the R-25 engine and it started flaming. They both ejected, but Bundela landed on his neck while Nayak parachuted safely. He was paralyzed due to spinal injuries, after four months of struggling in the intensive care unit, he died on 19 August 2002.

References

{{reflist Indian Air Force officers Indian Air Force personnel 2002 deaths