Six Char Dham pilgrims and a pilot were among seven people killed when a helicopter crashed minutes after it took off from Kedarnath shrine for Guptkashi. Out of the six killed three are from Gujarat. The accident occurred at Dev Darshini, between Garudchatti and Lincholi. Report said that five of the pilgrims were women.
The chopper, operated by Aryan Aviation, was a Bell-407, registered as VTRPN. According to the State Disaster Response Force, the chopper went down while negotiating dense fog. District disaster management officer N K Rajwar stated that “It looks like the pilot, after seeing the fog ahead, tried to return to Kedarnath. In the process, the chopper’s tail hit the ground as it was flying too low.”
The fatalities have been identified as Purva Ramanuj (26), Kriti (30), and Urvi (25) from Gujarat; Sujata (56), Prem Kumar (63) and Kala (60) from Tamil Nadu, and pilot Anil Singh, 57, from Mumbai. Teams of SDRF and NDRF rushed to the spot for search and rescue operations. “All seven persons on board died on the spot,” said an SDRF official.
A senior police officer monitoring the development said, “the pilot had told ATC that he was returning because of severe fog that had caused poor vision after taking off from Kedarnath. He was turning around after gaining clearance when the helicopter crashed into a hill.”
C Ravishankar, CEO of Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority said that a DGCA team has reached Dehradun and will start a technical investigation to ascertain the cause of the accident.
