Kathmandu, May 30 (PTI) Four members of a family have died in the Tara Air plane crash in Nepal's mountainous Mustang district on Sunday minutes after taking off from the tourist city of Pokhara, similar to the Tripathi family from Thane in Maharashtra.

Residents of Teenmane Bhanjhyang, Ganesh Narayan Shrestha, 52, his wife Rashmi Shrestha, 48, and two daughters Rojina Shrestha and Rabina Shrestha aged 23 and 20 respectively lost their lives in the accident, The Himalayan Times newspaper reported.

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Pieces of the wreckage of the passenger plane that crashed on Sunday morning were found at 14,500ft in Sano Sware Bhir of Thasang in Mustang district in northwestern Nepal, after nearly 20 hours since the plane went missing, the Nepal Army said on Monday.

Following the accident, local people of Teenmane Bhanjhyang in Sahid Lakhan Rural Municipality-5 of Gorkha district have been mourning the death of the four family members.

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The police personnel, however, have not confirmed the death of all of the family members, Chief District Officer of Mustang, Netra Prasad Sharma shared that all of those 22 onboard in the now-crashed flight have lost their lives as 21 bodies have been recovered already while a search is on for one missing person, the report added.

A few relatives and neighbours of the family have left for Kathmandu after they found that the recovered dead bodies from the incident site are being flown to Maharajgunj-based Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH) for autopsy.

The two daughters Rashmi and Rojina studied in the US and were visiting Nepal during which the family decided to travel to Pokhara. Ashok Tripathi (54), Vaibhavi Bandekar Tripathi (51) and their son Dhanush (22) and daughter Ritika (15) from Thane city were also passengers in the ill-fated aircraft.

Meanwhile, the Nepal government has formed a five-member commission of inquiry headed by senior aeronautical engineer Ratish Chandra Lal Suman to find out the cause of the Tara Air plane crash.

A preliminary investigation revealed that the aircraft had crashed into the mountains after it swerved to the right, instead of turning to the left due to inclement weather, CAAN Director-General Pradeep Adhikari said during a meeting of the International Committee of the Parliament on Monday.

Earlier in the afternoon, the CAAN in a statement said that the plane had crashed at Thasang-2 in Mustang district at the height of 14,500 feet.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)