Dehradun: A helicopter flying from Badrinath to Dehradun crashed near Joshimath in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district on Friday afternoon. Six people were on board, including the pilot.
The Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority said the Trans Bharat Aviation Pvt Ltd helicopter, call sign VT-HCX, took off from Badrinath at about 1.14 pm bound for Sahastradhara in Dehradun. It lost communication around 2.20 pm while flying over the Joshimath valley, and the tracking system stopped following it.
UCADA released the names of those on board: pilot Captain Himanshu, and passengers Prathapa, Arun, Shankar Gowda, Sudheer K and H S Natraja. Initial reports said the passengers were from Bengaluru.
Officials said the helicopter crashed into a hillside near the JP Power House, close to Marwari Bridge. Chamoli's District Disaster Management Officer Nandkishore Joshi said a white object was seen burning in the forest above the JP dam, after which the search was intensified.
Teams from the Chamoli administration, police, the State Disaster Response Force, the Army and the ITBP have been dispatched to the site.
Weather is the biggest obstacle. The area is under rain, snowfall, low visibility and strong winds, and the India Meteorological Department had issued an orange alert for Chamoli on Friday, warning of thunderstorms with lightning, hail and gusty winds of 40 to 50 kmph in isolated places, along with light rain and snowfall along the Badrinath-Joshimath sector.
UCADA CEO Prateek Jain said another helicopter will be sent to locate the wreckage once the weather clears. As a precaution, the entire fleet of Trans Bharat Aviation has been grounded.
Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said he was monitoring the situation and had ordered that anyone critically injured be airlifted to a higher-level medical facility. Badrinath is one of the four Char Dham shrines and draws lakhs of pilgrims each year, though the season is now winding down.