With inclement weather restricting the aerial search operations to only about a little over five hours, there was no trace of the Pawan Hans helicopter carrying Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu on the second day today,
While choppers of the Indian Air Force (IAF) were pressed into service, two Sukhois were also flown in from the base at Bareilly. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) too joined the search by providing satellite imagery back-up.
Sources said the Sukhoi mission has managed to identify two likely crash sites, including one about 20 kilometres northeast of Sela Pass — the point which the helicopter carrying Khandu could not cross due to inclement weather. While the detailed analysis of the photographs is being carried out, ground teams have already started for this location. The Centre is expecting a definite report by Monday afternoon.
The five-seater helicopter carrying Khandu, crew members Captain J S Babbar and Captain K S Malick, Khandu’s security officer Yeshi Choddak and Yeshi Lamu, sister of Tawang legislator Tsewang Dhondup, went missing on Saturday morning, 20 minutes after taking off from Tawang for Itanagar.
In all, nearly 30 search teams, each comprising about 30 personnel of the Army, ITBP and SSB, have been pressed into service to cover the entire area.
The Ministry of External Affairs is in touch with the Bhutan government to facilitate cooperation on the ground. External Affairs Minister S M Krishna spoke to Bhutanese PM Jigme Thinley for this purpose. While IAF choppers used Bhutanese airspace frequently today, the Bhutanese authorities have also launched search operations in the area.
The IAF had drawn up a strategy to launch the aerial search from three locations — Guwahati, Tezpur and Tawang — from 5 am today. But inclement weather played spoilsport, compelling the operations to be called off much before dusk.
“We had plans to send out one Mi-17 helicopter each from Guwahati and Tawang and two Cheetah choppers from Tezpur. But even as the weather remained largely bad, only four sorties could be made during the entire day. In fact, we had to call off the operations quite early,” Wing Commander Ranjib Sahoo, spokesman at the IAF’s Eastern Command headquarters at Shillong told The Indian Express.
According to him, while the Mi-17 helicopter based at Tawang made two sorties, the two Cheetah choppers from the IAF base at Tezpur also made two sorties each. The Mi-17 helicopter from Guwahati did not take off because of the bad weather, Sahoo said.
An official in the Army’s Four Corps headquarter at Tezpur said while several hundred Army personnel posted at various locations in Tawang, West Kameng and East Kameng districts of western Arunachal Pradesh carried out search operations on foot, hundreds of civilians also joined them.
“Almost every landline telephone and mobile phone in the three districts was called up by the authorities in order to send out the message that a helicopter with the Chief Minister on board is missing,” the official at Four Corps HQ said. Indian defence personnel posted inside Bhutan, as well as personnel or the Bhutanese Army and Bhutanese Police have also joined the search inside their territory adjacent to Arunachal Pradesh.
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