Helicopter wreckage found, four crew members feared dead

Raipur, July 16 (UNI) Four crew members on board a Chhattisgarh government helicopter, which went missing on Saturday, were feared killed as its wreckage has been found near Bodlakhar in the dense forests of Tarregaon in Kawardha district of Chhattisgarh this evening.

Official sources said captain A S Siddhu, pilot Vikram Savekar, engineer Amitabh Soni and senior technician Manish Badania were feared killed in the crash that took place in the Jurghi-Dadar hills, under Tarregaon police station area.

They said helicopters engaged in search operations could not reach the spot due to poor light this evening hence the wreckage would be retrieved only tomorrow morning. As bodies are yet to be recovered, there is no official confirmation about the deaths. Kawardha Additional Collector R R Khan told UNI that a forest guard R D Mahananda had informed forest officials this afternoon that a helicopter was lying in the forests.

Immediately, a team of revenue officials, led by naib tehsildar, was rushed to the spot, which is about 155 km away from the district headquarters.

The forest guard, who spotted the wreckage, had told administrative officials that he had found the wreckage surrounded by villagers. Later, he trekked down the hillock to reach the district headquarters.

The search party had to trek through the forests for about five km, as there are no motorable roads to the hillock covered by thick forests. Senior civil and police officials have rushed to the spot .

The helicopter had gone missing on Saturday afternoon after it took off from Raja Bhoj airport in Bhopal for Raipur at around 1150 hrs. Frantic search had begun as the chopper did not reach the state capital as scheduled.

For the last two days, two Indian Air Force helicopters and a chopper of the Madhya Pradesh government had carried out aerial search over the forests of Mandla and Balaghat in Madhya Pradesh and on the air route in Chhattisgarh as well as in Maharashtra.

Chief Minister Raman Singh had stated in the assembly that it had sought the help of Indian Space Research Orgnaisation (ISRO) to locate the helicopter through remote sensing technique and assistance of the army to carry out search on the ground in the dense forests.

UNI