Navneet Yadav

A 26 year old naval officer was tracking enemy ships in the dark when her plane fell into the Arabian Sea. Two days later divers found her 60 metres down, still inside the plane. Her name was Lieutenant Kiran Shekhawat. She was born in Mumbai in 1988. Her father served in the Navy. She studied physics and joined the Indian Naval Academy in 2010. She became an observer in the Navy's air arm and married Vivek Singh Chhoker, also a naval officer. In January 2015 she marched at the Republic Day parade in the Navy's first all women contingent. Two months later, on the night of 24 March 2015, she took off from Goa in a Navy Dornier on a sortie to track hostile ships. Around 10 pm the aircraft crashed into the sea, about 37 km south west of Goa. Fishermen found the pilot, Commander Nikhil Joshi, floating unconscious in the water. Kiran and the co pilot Abhinav Nagori were missing. The Navy searched through the night and the next day. On 26 March a warship found the wreckage on the seabed, about 60 metres down. That night divers recovered Kiran's body from inside the plane. She was the first woman officer of the Indian Navy to die in the line of duty.