Seven dead after air ambulance crashes in Jharkhand forest
An air ambulance carrying a burn patient from Ranchi to New Delhi crashed in Chatra district, and all seven people on board were feared dead.
An air ambulance carrying a burn victim from Ranchi to New Delhi crashed in Jharkhand’s Chatra district on 23 February 2026, and officials feared all seven people on board were dead.
Hindustan Times reported that the aircraft was a Beechcraft C90 operated by Delhi-based Redbird Airways. It took off from Birsa Munda Airport in Ranchi at 7:11 pm, established contact with Kolkata at 7:34 pm, then lost communication and radar contact before going down in a forest near Simaria. The crash site was described as deep in the forest, making it difficult for officials to confirm the casualty count immediately.
The passengers included a 41-year-old burn patient, Sanjay Kumar, who had sustained severe injuries and was being shifted from Devkamal Hospital and Research Centre in Ranchi. The report also named medical staff, attendants and two crew members. Ranchi airport director Vinod Kumar said bad weather could have been a factor, but the cause would only be established after an investigation.
The aircraft’s disappearance and the immediate assumption of fatalities underline how difficult remote crash response can be when a plane goes down in dense terrain. In this case, the site’s inaccessibility prevented an instant recovery operation and left local officials relying on the limited information available from the flight’s last known communications.
The accident also renewed scrutiny of chartered air operators in India. The Hindustan Times report noted that the crash came amid wider concern about non-scheduled aviation, including special audits by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. Those audits had been announced before, but the reports had not been made public.
The article also placed the crash in a broader aviation context, citing recent fatal incidents and unanswered questions about safety oversight. But the verified event itself is straightforward: an air ambulance vanished after takeoff, went down in forested terrain, and officials believed no one on board survived.
Anant Sinha, the chief executive of Devkamal Hospital, said the patient had been arranged a transfer for better treatment in Delhi. That detail shows the human purpose of the flight: an urgent medical journey that ended in another fatal emergency.
The final death toll, the passengers’ identities and the aircraft’s precise crash mechanism all remain subject to investigation. But on the evidence available, 23 February became a day of multiple losses: the patient, the medical escorts and the flight crew were all caught in a crash that now falls squarely under aviation investigators’ scrutiny.
