India retires Soviet fighter jet after six decades

India bids farewell to its Russian-built MiG-21 fighter jets after sixty years of service with a grand flyover ceremony in the northern city of Chandigarh on Friday. First inducted into the Indian Air Force in the 1960s, the MiG-21 was renowned for its simplicity and ruggedness, but eventually became tarnished by a legacy of some 400 crashes.

The send-off came a day after New Delhi signed a $7-billion deal to acquire 97 domestically designed and built Tejas jets as it seeks to modernise its Soviet-era fleet.