Rescue operations are underway in the state of Madhya Pradesh to help the Sukhoi-30 and Mirage 2000 pilots.
Two Indian Air Force fighter jets have crashed after an apparent mid-air collision during exercises about 300 km (185 miles) south of the capital New Delhi.
Both planes took off on Saturday morning from Gwalior Air Base, about 50 km (30 miles) east of where they came down.
“We located the wreckage of one of the planes and found the injured pilot in the forests of Pahadgarh,” officer Dharmender Gaur told the AFP news agency.
“The second aircraft probably went down further away from the site and we have sent teams to locate it.”
Meanwhile, local administrator Ankit Asthana told the Reuters news agency that two of the three crew members from one of the jets were rescued and rushed to hospital.
The status of the third crew member was not immediately clear, and details about the crew of the second plane were not released.
The planes that crashed in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh were Sukhoi-30 and Mirage 2000, news agency ANI said in a tweet citing defense sources.
Saturday is the latest in a series of plane crashes involving the Indian military air fleet.
Five army soldiers were killed last October when their helicopter crashed in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, near the militarized and disputed border with China.
It was the second military helicopter crash in the northeastern state that month, coming weeks after a Cheetah helicopter crashed near the town of Tawang, killing the pilot.
India’s defense chief, General Bipin Rawat, was among 13 killed when his Russian-made Mi-17 helicopter crashed while transporting him to an air force base in December 2021.