Seven Defence personnel killed in IAF chopper crash on China border
Chopper crash in Arunachal Pradesh: The bodies were later flown to the IAF base in Tezpur in Assam at around noon after the legal formalities were carried out at Khrimu itself, SP Meena said. (Representational photo) Chopper crash in Arunachal Pradesh: The bodies were later flown to the IAF base in Tezpur in Assam at around noon after the legal formalities were carried out at Khrimu itself, SP Meena said. (Representational photo)
Seven defence personnel on board an Mi-17 V5 helicopter belonging to the Indian Air Force (IAF) were killed early Friday morning when it crashed in Tawang district in Arunachal Pradesh, close to the China border, official sources said.
The crash took place at around 6:30 am on Friday when the helicopter, which had taken off from an Army helipad at Khrimu, in the outskirts of Tawang town, had almost reached an Army location on a regular air maintenance sortie. The spot is about 120 km north-east of Tawang town, close to the China border.
Though inaccessible by road, Army personnel from the nearest location managed to reach the crash site within a few hours of the incident, and the bodies of the seven defence personnel – five of them of the IAF and two of the Army – were airlifted and brought back to Khrimu, Tawang SP MK Meena said.
The bodies were later flown to the IAF base in Tezpur in Assam at around noon after the legal formalities were carried out at Khrimu itself, SP Meena said. A Court of Inquiry has been ordered to ascertain the cause of the accident, Tezpur-based Defence PRO Lt Col Shombit Ghosh informed.
The seven who died in the crash were: Wing Commander Vikram Upadhyay, Squadron Leader S Tiwari, MWO AK Singh, Sergeant Gautam and Sergeant Satish Kumar, all of the IAF, and Sepoy E Balaji and Sepoy HN Deka of the Army.
This is the second helicopter crash in Arunachal Pradesh in three months. The previous incident took place on July 4, in which three IAF pilots were killed during a rescue operation of flood-affected people in the state. The Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) had lost contact soon after it had taken off from Sagalee before the rescue. The mutilated bodies of Wing Commander Mandeep Singh Dhillon, Flight Lieutenant Pramod Kumar Singh and Sergeant Rajendra Yashwant Gujjar were recovered from the crash site three days later.
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