Air India Captain D. K. Jatar commanded the Kashmir Princess, bombed in flight on 11 April 1955 and lost off the Natuna Islands.
Bomb Aboard the Kashmir Princess
The Kashmir Princess, an Air India Lockheed Constellation under charter, left Hong Kong for Jakarta on 11 April 1955 carrying delegates, mainly journalists, to the Bandung Conference. Captain D. K. Jatar was in command.
A time bomb exploded behind the No. 3 engine, and fire followed. Jatar shut that engine down and feathered the propeller. The crew sent three distress signals before the radio failed.
He tried to bring the aircraft down on the sea. Smoke in the cockpit, loss of pressure and failing electrical circuits defeated the attempt. Life jackets were issued and the emergency doors opened as the aircraft descended.
Three Survivors off the Natuna Islands
The Constellation came down off the Natuna Islands in Indonesia. Of the 19 on board, 16 died, Jatar among them. The first officer, navigator and maintenance engineer reached safety.
The intended target was the Chinese premier, Zhou Enlai, who did not take the flight. Hong Kong investigators held Kuomintang agents responsible.
Jatar's posthumous Ashoka Chakra, listed in 1955, was the first to a civilian. The Defence Ministry's portal gives his home state as Maharashtra.
What the citation recorded
The official citation could not be read for this article. The Defence Ministry's portal leaves the citation field blank in the archived record. Published accounts of the loss say that after the bomb exploded he shut down the damaged engine and tried to bring the Constellation down on the sea, and that the crew issued life jackets. This is a summary, not the official wording.
Cover image: Robert Prummel, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized for this page. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ashoka_Chakra_India_De_drie_medailles_van_voor_1967.jpg