BENGALURU: A helicopter carrying six persons, including the pilot, crashed near Joshimath in Uttarakhand on Friday afternoon. The helicopter, operated by Trans Bharat Aviation Pvt Ltd, took off from Badrinath civil helipad at 1.12 pm for Sahastradhara in Dehradun.
“As per the Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority, two minutes after it took off, at 1.14pm, the helicopter lost control with the Air Traffic Control. The Army personnel first saw the copter fall behind the Hathi Pahad near Chayee village in the Jyotirmath area of Chamoli district and immediately alerted district authorities,”
Chamoli Superintendent of Police Surjeet Singh Panwar told TNIE. He said that all the six bodies were retrieved in a joint operation by the Army, police, SDRF and ITBP. “The weather today is bad. It has been raining. The place where the helicopter crashed is forested. It was found burnt and there were no survivors. The bodies were charred. They will be taken tomorrow to Dehradun for postmortem and further legal formalities,” he added.
The passengers, all from Bengaluru, had completed the pilgrimage to Kedarnath and Badrinath – the two main pilgrimages of Char Dham - and were on their way to Dehradun when the helicopter crashed, leaving all of them including the pilot from Delhi dead.
Sources said the India Meteorological Department (IMD) had issued a state-wide yellow alert for all districts in Uttarakhand on Friday. It is unclear how the helicopter was allowed to take off.
“The official information was conveyed to the Karnataka government in the evening. Some immediate family members of the victims have already left for Dehradun.
Others will leave soon. In case of difficulty in identification of bodies, the families of victims will be requested for DNA samples,” said sources. They added that the state government is likely to bear the required expenses.