Pinky Mali, who was one of the five persons who died in the Baramati air crash, promised her father that she would call him after landing in Baramati. But that moment will never come. Pinky Mali was the flight attendant who accompanied Ajit Pawar on the Mumbai-Baramati flight. The plane crashed while landing at the airport, killing all passengers.
His voice full of emotion and his eyes welling up, a distraught Shivkumar Mali said his daughter had promised to “talk to him tomorrow”.
“Pappo, I am flying to Baramati tomorrow (Wednesday) with DCM Ajit Pawar. After I drop him, I will go to Nanded and talk to you once I reach the hotel,” Shivkumar, a resident of Prabhadevi in central Mumbai, recounted his conversation with Pinky.
The flight, a Learjet 45, was operated by Delhi-based VSR Ventures, which made an emergency landing at the Baramati airport.
Pinky Mali flew with the President, chief ministers and several political leaders, Shivkumar said, adding that according to her father, she flew with Ajit Pawar for the fourth time.
With moist eyes, Shivkumar said, “I spoke to her last night and she told me that she will go to Baramati with Deputy CM Ajit Pawar and then go to Nanded. I told her ‘let’s talk tomorrow after your duty’. But that tomorrow will never come.”
The father, who is also an activist of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which Pawar led, said a local politician named Samadhan Sarvankar informed him about the Ajit Pawar plane crash.
“I turned on the TV. The news shocked me,” he said.
Their last meeting
Shivkumar met Pinky on January 16 when she visited Prabhadevi from Thane to cast her vote. Pinky has worked as a flight attendant for the past five years. It started with Air India and switched to private charter flights after a few years, he said.
Read also | A Learjet 45 faced a similar incident during an emergency landing at Mumbai Airport in 2023
“During a recent flight with Ajit Pawar, my daughter complained to him that he was traveling through Maharashtra but not paying attention to NCP activists. When Pawar asked her why she felt that way, Pinky told him that I have been an NCP worker for 35 years,” Shivkumar said, adding that the interaction prompted a call from the deputy CM.
“While I was driving the car, the call went unanswered. Then I got a message that Pawar wanted to talk to me,” he said. That call will never happen either, he added.
After hearing about the accident, Shivkumar and his family rushed to Baramati. Apart from Pawar and Pinky, the other victims were identified as Vidip Jadhav, Captain Shambhavi Pathak and Captain Sumit Kapur.
