Sathe complained of chest pain late in the evening and was rushed to a private hospital where doctors declared him dead. He breathed his last at 7:50 pm, doctors said. A lawyer by training, Sathe was the Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting in Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's cabinet.
He also assured the kin of victims that steps would be taken to get them compensation in line with an international convention of International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). Taking stock of the crash of the Dubai-Kozhikode AIE flight in Kozhikode and the relief measures, the minister said pilot in-command of the plane, Captain Deepak Vasant Sathe, among those killed in the accident, was one of the most experienced commanders with more than 10,000 flying hours.
The back-to-back statements of three Indira Gandhi loyalists -- R K Dhawan, Vasant Sathe and C K Jafar Sherief (the former questioning the advisors of Rahul Gandhi and the direction of his politics and the other two wanting Priyanka Gandhi to come into the mainstream of Congress politics) -- is being seen as a reflection of the concern gripping the senior guard in the Congress over the functioning of the party as well as the fate of the upcoming UP elections.
Former Union minister Vasant Sathe said on Tuesday that there was nothing wrong or illegal in giving safe passage to then Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson and the Congress should not feel embarrassed about it.
The funeral of Sathe, 58, who was a resident of suburban Chandivali in Mumbai, will take place on Tuesday, said a senior Air India official.
Veteran Congress leaders and former Union ministers, Vasant Sathe and N K P Salve, who were on a hunger strike on Friday demanding statehood for Maharashtra's Vidarbha region, were hospitalised after they complained of weakness and nausea.
The funeral of Captain Sathe, 58, who was a resident of Chandivali in Mumbai, will be held in Mumbai later in the day.
The flight from Dubai with 190 people, including a six-member crew, overshot the tabletop runway during landing at the Kozhikode airport in heavy rain on Friday, killing 18 people, including both the pilots.
"Today is the birthday of Capt Sathe'smother. He had last met his parents in March and was constantly in touch with them over phone since then. They had last spoken a day before yesterday," his nephew Dr Yashodhan Sathe told PTI.
Sathe had suffered multiple injuries on his skull in that incident, but due to his strong will power and passion he cleared the test and started flying again, his cousin said.
With the United Progressive Alliance government likely to announce a separate Telangana state on Tuesday, the call for carving out Vidarbha state out of Maharashtra has started gaining heat.
'Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) of the ill-fated aircraft have been retrieved. AAIB (Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau) is conducting investigations,' Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri tweeted, as fresh questions were raised on the safety parameters of the runway.
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