No fewer than seven (7) persons, including an infant, have been killed in a helicopter crash that occurred at Himalayas, Uttarakhand State of India.
According to Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority officials, the chopper, which was conveying the victims for a Hindu pilgrimage, crashed shortly after takeoff at about 5:30am (00:00 GMT) on Sunday.
Officials said the ill-fated helicopter took off from the temple town of Kedarnath for Guptkashi, before it crashed.
Those on board have been identified as the pilot, Captain Rajveer Singh Chauhan, and the passengers – Vikram Rawat, Vinod Devi, Trishti Singh, Rajkumar Jaiswal, his wife Shraddha Jaiswal and their two-year-old daughter, Kashi.
Authorities revealed that the bodies of the deceased persons were badly burned in a fire that followed the crash.
Uttarakhand’s State Disaster Response Force told the ANI news agency, that the crash site has been located in a remote and dense forest area, saying rescue operation was under way in coordination with the local police.
Recall the recent Boeing Dreamliner crash which killed 241 people within the week, when an ill-fated London-bound Air India plane crashed into residential area shortly after take-off in Ahmedabad.
Officials attributed the Sunday crash to poor weather conditions.
Uttarakhand’s Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami in a post on X, described the incident as “very sad.”
