ONGC chopper crash: Six bodies recovered

New Delhi, Jan 14 (PTI) Six bodies including that of allthe five ONGC officers and one of the two pilots of ill-fatedPawan Hans chopper, which cras...

(Eds: correcting word in para 1)New Delhi, Jan 14 (PTI) Six bodies including that of allthe five ONGC officers and one of the two pilots of ill-fatedPawan Hans chopper, which crashed in Arabian Sea yesterday,have been recovered.

While the search is on for the remaining one person, theill-fated Chopper's VDR too has been recovered, ONGC said in astatement.

Bodies of ONGC Officials P N Srinivasan, R Saravanan,Jose Antony, Pankaj Garg and one of the pilots Capt R Ohatkar,have been identified, the statement said. "The identificationprocess for the sixth body is still on.""During the Search and Rescue (SAR) Operations on January14, 2018 the VDR of the chopper has been recovered. Searchoperation is on for the remaining debris of the productionchopper VT – PWA," it said.

ONGC and Coast Guard vessels: CG-268, CG-241, CG-314,Suriya-3, and CG-769, Samudra Sevak, HAL Anant, TAG-20, TAG17, TAG-15, OSVs LJ Johnson and BS Negi and Ocean Crewser-IIIhave been relentlessly combing the area.

The search operation is being steered by the ONGC topmanagement led by Shashi Shanker, CMD ONGC.

Shanker, who has been camping in Mumbai to oversee thesearch operations as well as ensuring all support for thebereaved families, has stated that a high level independentinvestigation will be immediately instituted to ascertain thereasons.

The recovered bodies of ONGC executives, after necessaryprocedures, have been handed over to the family members andtwo families have taken the bodies to their native places forlast rites as desired by them. ONGC is extending all possiblehelp to the bereaved families in this hour of grief andcrisis, it said in the statement. PTI ANZ BALBAL.

This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.

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