The clock marked 8.46:02 Wednesday morning when a fireball with a huge smoke cloud appeared on a CCTV camera that monitored a highway close to the airport in Maharashtra's Baramati.

A plane crash occurred which involved Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar together with four other passengers.

The highway camera recorded the exact moment when Ajit Pawar who was 66 years old died in the crash that destroyed his Learjet 45 aircraft.

The private jet which departed from Mumbai at 8.10 am lost control during its landing attempt and crashed.

The location displayed the airplane wreckage together with fire and smoke while emergency workers and shocked local residents approached the scene to assist and deal with the extraordinary situation. The officials later confirmed that all five members of the crew had perished in the incident.

Flightradar24 reported that the airplane disappeared from radar at 8.45 am while it made its second approach to landing which ended in a crash an eyewitness said the aircraft collided with the ground 100 feet before reaching the runway.

"When the aircraft descended, it seemed it would crash… and it did. It then exploded and burst into a massive fire and four or five more explosions followed," the man said. "People came and tried to pull out passengers from the aircraft. Due to the huge fire, they could not help…"

The Learjet 45 which has a maximum capacity of nine passengers stopped its broadcast at 8.34 am and resumed broadcasting after a few minutes before it lost all transmission again at 8.43 am.

The location where the aircraft stopped its second transmission approximately 20 kilometres from the airport which served as its intended destination.

The current available data indicates that the aircraft maintained an altitude of 1016 meters which equals more than one kilometre while flying at a speed of 237 kilometres per hour until it lost contact with flight tracking systems.

Pawar became the record holder for serving as Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra six times which established him as the longest non-consecutive holder of that office.

He cooperated with Prithviraj Chavan from Congress and Devendra Fadnavis from BJP, and he worked with Uddhav Thackeray and Eknath Shinde from Shiv Sena. The dream of becoming chief minister himself tragically remains unfulfilled.

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