Salem: A 26-year-old IT professional from Bangalore fell to her death when her parachute failed to open properly during a skydiving expedition at Omalur, near Salem, in Tamil Nadu.
Ramya’s husband, Vinodh, watched in shock as his wife plunged to her death from 10,000 feet. Reports said the couple was celebrating their first wedding anniversary. They were married on January 23, 2013.
Salem police has arrested A. Ankhitha, 28, of New Delhi, executive secretary of the Indian Skydiving and Parachute Association, which organised the training programme.
Trainers G. Mohan Rao, an ex-Naval officer, P. Aiswarya Yadav and N. Rajesh, a Naval officer based in Visakhapatnam, have also been picked up for interrogation.
“The organisers had not provided emergency medical care. They had no ambulance stationed at the training camp. Besides, the parachute appears to have been faulty,” said Salem superintendent of police R. Sakthivel. The skydiving training camp had started on January 24 at the disused Salem airport and was scheduled to end on February 2.
The couple, Ramya and Vinodh, both IT professionals, had enrolled for the programme on January 25 and had made a successful landing from a height of 3,000 feet. The thrilled couple came back on Thursday morning for a higher jump called the 'acceleratory free fall'.
They boarded a small aircraft along with trainers Mohan Rao and Aiswarya Yadav at the Salem airport at 11.10 am on Thursday.
“Once they touched 10,000 feet, the instructors asked Ramya to jump,” Vinodh told the police.
“She was supposed to open the parachute once she reached 6,000 ft. But when she tried to open it, the parachute didn’t open properly. Instead, it started to spin around her body due to heavy winds,” he added.
The instructors asked her to open the emergency parachute, but it was too late. She fell to the ground at Pottiampatti near Omalur. Ramya was rushed to a hospital near Omalur where doctors declared her brought dead.
In his complaint to the police, Vinodh said that the trainers had failed to give her instructions through the headphones in time about how to use the emergency parachute.
“Usually, someone will instruct us while we are practising skydiving. But in her case, no one guided her and they escaped from the scene after seeing the incident,” he alleged.
The Skydiving Association charges about Rs 17,500 per person for diving from a height of 3,000 ft and Rs 41,500 for a 10,000-ft jump, said Ashwath Narayanan of Krishangiri, who joined the expedition.
“Ramya asked me to go for the 10,000 feet dive bravely. But I was too scared. Minutes later, she was lying dead,” he lamented.
Ramya and Vinodh had married only a year ago and she was all set to take up a new IT job in Bangalore on Friday.
