Agencies/Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh
 |
|
Khandu: tragic end |
A search team found the wreckage of the aircraft in the mountainous state yesterday, four days after it lost contact with air traffic control.
The helicopter was carrying Dorjee Khandu, a politician from the Congress Party. It took off from Tawang town near the Chinese border and was headed to state capital Itanagar early Saturday.
The team of local villagers found the debris and bodies of Khandu, the two pilots, a security officer and a local in the remote Luguthang region near Tawang.
“Due to the rugged and inaccessible terrain, an Indian Air Force helicopter has been sent to the crash site to retrieve the bodies,” state government spokesman Jarbom Gamlin told reporters.
The family members of the chief minister reached the site of the crash and identified the body but the other four bodies were mutilated and burnt beyond recognition, officials said.
Police said a small group of the chief minister’s family, security personnel and local officials arrived at the site after an arduous four-hour trek near Lobotang, 30km north of the 13,700ft Sela Pass in Tawang.
“Some family members were able to identify the chief minister’s mutilated body. According to information, the four other bodies were badly mutilated and charred almost beyond recognition,” the official said.
Efforts are underway to get back the five bodies to the nearest accessible point but this could take several hours.
“It would be an uphill climb, and the terrain is rough and slippery,” Kiren Rijiju, adviser to the chief minister, said.
While the aerial survey and satellite imagery data failed to pinpoint the exact location, it was a team of local people, untrained and with no equipment, that found the wreckage.
According to M S Bhurji, eastern sector chief of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), the delay in locating the wreckage was due to the failure of the aerial mapping efforts.
“We were concentrating on the southwest areas of Sela Pass based on inputs from the aerial reconnaissance and satellite imagery data. However, the wreckage was discovered by the local people on the northeast of Sela. That’s why it took so long,” Bhurji said.
The wreckage was discovered “not by any force or not even by some aerial recce (reconnaissance), but by local residents of that area,” he said.
The civilians were not trained in mapping, neither did they have any mapping instrument to co-ordinate the search, he said.
As news of the sighting of the wreckage spread, a pall of gloom descended on the mountainous state.
“This is heartbreaking. We are sad as the chief minister was a visionary and honest politician. His death has shaken us,” moaned Bamang Tago, a civil rights campaigner.
Thousands of troops and villagers, as well as several military aircraft, had been deployed in the search since Saturday.
The helicopter was new and registered in July last year, but it had just one engine and hence was deemed unfit for such terrain, aviation experts said.
Under the new norms of civil aviation requirements issued on June 1 last year, any single-engine chopper can be deployed only on those routes, or areas, that permit the execution of a forced landing, said a top official at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
Fifty-six-year old Khandu, a popular regional politician, had been chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh since April 2007.
It was the third helicopter crash in India’s hilly, forested northeastern region in the last two weeks.
On April 19, a helicopter crashed in Arunachal Pradesh, killing all 17 on board. Three days later, four army personnel died after their helicopter crashed in the neighbouring state of Sikkim.