When Gold Fell from the Sky: The Forgotten Tragedy of Langtarai Hills
High in the hills of Langtarai, where the wind hums through bamboo groves and dense forest trees to the ridges, a strange story still lingers — a story of fire, fortune, and fate.
It was the night of March 14, 1953, when the skies above north Tripura roared with a massive storm darkly fierce and accompanied by unprecedented rains. Out of that deep and diabolic darkness came a blinding flash — and a crash that shook the hills awake.
By morning, word spread: a Pakistani plane had fallen from the sky, and with it, bars of gold.
The Flight That Never Arrived
The aircraft — a Convair CV-240 of Orient Airlines — had taken off from Rawalpindi on its way to Dhaka, carrying 16 people and a cargo of gold bars belonging to the Reserve Bank of Pakistan.
It refuelled at Delhi and lifted off again that afternoon, piloted by Captain Mostaq and co-pilot Rahaman, with three air hostesses and eleven passengers. By evening, as it crossed into the northeast, a massive storm swallowed the aircraft whole.
Flying blind in torrential rain and vicious storm, the pilots tried desperately to contact ground stations — Agartala, Sylhet’s Samshernagar, even Dhaka — but the radio crackled only with static. When they finally sighted two small dots on the navigator’s chart — the airfields of Kamalpur and Kailasahar — they dropped altitude, hoping for a glimpse of a runway.
But the Kamalpur and Kailasahar airports had long shut for the day. In the 1950s, their modest staff, (In Kailasahar the aerodrome was headed by officer Nirmalananda Barman), left by noon. There was no lights, no signals — only darkness and thunder.
At some point, the pilots turned toward Kailasahar for a final attempt. Villagers remember hearing the desperate drone of an aircraft circling low, then what happened was a sudden colossal crash. The Convair had slammed head-on into the Langtarai ridge, exploding into flames.
It was a Saturday night the hills would never forget.
A Villager and the Wreckage
At dawn, a tribal farmer named Kartik Debbarma was taking a shortcut through the hills to reach Halahali market and walked into history.. He stumbled upon a scene that could have come straight out of a nightmare — twisted metal, charred trees, and lifeless bodies scattered among the rocks.
Among them hung a woman, suspended from a treetop. Kartik climbed up, brought her down, and offered her water. She died in his arms.
As he moved through the wreckage, Kartik noticed strange greyish bars lying in the mud. Their surfaces were melted and darkened by soot. He pocketed a few, unsure what they were. Only later, when a trader’s eyes widened at the sight of one, did Kartik realise what he had found.
It was gold.
And Kartik , by then aware of the fortune at his will, made several trips to the place without telling anyone and made a huge treasure trove—of his own.
The Gold Rush of Langtarai
The news spread like wildfire across the countryside. Within days, the narrow forest trails were teeming with people — tribals and non-tribals, farmers, traders, teachers, drunks and drifters — all scrambling up the hills in search of fortune.
Langtarai turned into a fever dream of greed and desperation. Some dug into the mud with their bare hands. Others scavenged for scraps of metal from the wreck. A lucky few returned with gold.
In the meantime, for Kartik, life changed overnight. The once-poor villager became “Sonar Kartik” — Golden Kartik. He refused to reveal where he had hidden his treasure—even to his wife, despite pleas, threats, and torture from the dacoits. Local robbers raided his home, tied him up, and beat him — but Kartik remained silent.
The gold, he said, was his destiny — and he would guard it with his life. Dacoits could not take his life, as it would the destiny would also then be killed forever.
Faith, Fire and Silence
Meanwhile, official teams arrived to deal with the aftermath. A group led by P. Nath, Assistant Aerodrome Officer from Agartala, trekked to the site along with a Christian priest, a Moulavi, and a Hindu purohit from Kailasahar. Together they buried the already decomposed remains of the victims, performing last rites of all three faiths — a solemn ritual on a lonely hill.
Later, aerodrome officer Amarendra Mukherjee and an insurance company representative confirmed the crash from the air using binoculars.
But the gold remained an unspoken mystery.
Pakistan could not formally claim it — the plane’s paperwork filed in Delhi made no mention of any gold consignment. And India could not acknowledge it without inviting diplomatic tension. The Superintendent of Police for all of Tripura then, Gauri Prasad Ghosh, along with officers Muktar Mia, Ramsesh Das, and Atul Gautam, launched discreet inquiries, but found nothing they could officially record. Even H.I. Namani, a Deputy Collector from East Pakistan, visited the site and returned empty-handed.
The Rise and Fall of “Sonar Kartik”
Back in Dhumacherra, Sonar Kartik’s fame spread far and wide. People lined up at his hut — some seeking help, others pretending to be long-lost relatives. And every day traders –mostly nontribals- came to give him ‘advice’ and ‘business proposals’. Kartik, generous and often drunk on local brew, never disappointed them and gave away pieces of gold freely.
He made friends with traders from nearby towns, who flattered and deceived him in equal measure. Gradually, his hidden hoard dwindled. By the time he realised it, the “Golden Kartik” was no longer golden.
He spent his last years wandering through Kamalpur and Kailasahar and Fatikroy’s dusty lanes, intoxicated with local brew or stoned with ganja– and forgotten — a man who had once held the wealth of a nation in his hands and at his will.
The Woman Who Came from Afar
Among the quieter stories born from that tragedy was one of love and loss.
Some months after the crash, a young Western woman arrived in Kailasahar. Her husband, one of the passengers, had perished in the disaster. Through her connections in New Delhi, she obtained permission to visit the site. But few dared to guide her into the wild terrain.
It was one officer D.H.D. Cruz, commanding the 6th Battalion of Assam Rifles camp at Manu, who finally agreed. With his men, he led her to the lonely clearing where the victims lay buried. She gathered a handful of soil from the grave — the only link left to her husband — and left, heartbroken.
Remembering Langtarai
The story of the 1953 Langtarai crash might have faded into dust, if not for the writings of Bimal Sinha, a popular CPM minister later assassinated by NLFT militants. His article, “Karachi Theke Langtarai” (“From Karachi to Langtarai”), captured the tragedy in vivid detail — though he mistakenly wrote that the flight took off from Karachi with 46 passengers. Official records later confirmed it had departed from Rawalpindi with 16 aboard. This write up is heavily based on Late Bimal Sinha’s story.
Even now, the people of Dhumacherra and Kailasahar recall the legend of that night — when a storm tore open the sky, when gold rained upon the hills, and when fortune and tragedy were born in the same instant.
Langtarai still sleeps under clouds, silent and watchful — keeping its secret, and the memory of the gold that fell from the sky.
|Also Read : Wings of Tragedy: The Forgotten Plane Crashes in Agartala Airport|
|For document :Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives
