MUMBAI: The search and rescue operation for the crashed Pawan Hans’s Dauphin chopper ferrying senior Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) officials to Bombay High Oil Field are still on, agencies said.
Though the rescue teams have recovered the helicopter’s black box, teams of Indian Coast Guard, ONGC and the Indian Navy are searching for a pilot of the chopper, who is still missing.
Rescuers recovered six bodies till late last night. Five of them were of the ONGC executives, while one was a Pawan Hans pilot.
ONGC officials on board the helicopter were P N Sreenivasan and Pankaj Garg (both DGM, Mechanical), Jose Antony, R Sarvanan and V K Bindulal Babu (all DGM, Production). All were based in Mumbai.
Captains V C Katoch and Ramesh Ohatkar were the pilots. The body of Captain Ohatkar was recovered last night, and search operations are on for Capt Katoch.
“The identification process for the sixth body is still on. During the Search and Rescue Operations on 14 January 2018, the Voice Data Recorder of the chopper has been recovered. Search operation is on for the remaining debris of the production chopper VT-PWA,” an ONGC release said here on Sunday evening.