Franklin Lakes Neurologist and Wife Killed in Plane Crash

Two Franklin Lakes residents—one pilot and one passenger—died Sunday morning on a New Jersey-bound plane that caught fire and crashed, according to the Ohio State Highway Patrol.

The pilot, 54-year-old Viswanathan Rajaraman, and the passenger, 50-year-old Mary J. Sundaram, were pronounced dead at the scene, the OSHP said in a press release (see .PDF file at right). The crash occurred just before 8:52 a.m. at Rickenbacker International Airport in Columbus, Ohio, where Rajaraman was attempting to take off and crashed east of the runway, OSHP said.

According to nycaviation.com, the couple was heading back from their daughter's graduation at Georgetown University, making a fuel stop in Ohio. In 2007, the daughter, Kaavya Viswanathan, made news as a Harvard undergraduate student when she was accused of plagiarizing her first book, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life." Subsequently, her book contract was canceled and her budding career as an author came to an abrupt end.

Ohio troopers, the Federal Aviation Administration, Port Authority, National Transportation Safety Bureau and other agencies all responded to the scene of the crash, which involved a 2008 Cirrus CR22 plane.

OSHP said the cause of the crash remains under investigation.