Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Bipin Rawat passed away on Wednesday, 8 December, after an Indian Air Force (IAF) Mi-17V5 helicopter conveying the military officer, his wife, and other officials, met with a fatal crash in Tamil Nadu's Coonoor.
As per the defence communication accessed by The Quint with regard to the flight manifest shows that the chopper from Delhi to Sulur was carrying CDS Rawat and his wife, as well as Brigadier LS Lidder, Defence Adviser to Chief of Defence Staff, Lt Colonel Harjinder Singh, NK Gursewak Singh, NK Jitendra Kumar, Vivek Kumar, Lance Naik B Sai Teja, and Hav Satpal.
The chopper had crashed after having taken off from Sulur in Nilgiris, while heading to the Wellington base.
Notably, this is the fifth military crash of the year. Here are the other unfortunate crashes that took place in the recent past:
Last month, on 18 November, IAF's chopper Mi-17 crashed while landing in Eastern Arunachal Pradesh. Five crew members who were on-board sustained injuries, but were safe.
A month before that, on 21 October, an IAF Mirage 2000 had crashed in Bhind, Madhya Pradesh, after a technical malfunction. The pilot ejected safely but was injured.
A MiG-21 Bison had crashed in Rajasthan’s Barmer on 25 August, as the pilot ejected safely.
Another MiG-21 Bison fighter jet had crashed in a village in Punjab’s Moga district on 21 May. Though the pilot Squadron Leader Abhinav Choudhary had ejected from the jet, he later succumbed to his injuries.
An Indian Navy MiG-29K had crashed in the Arabian Sea on 26 November 2020. While one of the pilots was rescued, the other remained missing.
General Rawat, who had taken over as India's first CDS on 31 December 2019, had earlier survived helicopter Cheetah's crash on 3 February in 2015 in Dimapur, Nagaland. He was a lieutenant general at that time.
Indian Air Force MiG-29 UPG of Squadron 223 had crashed near Hoshiarpur on 8 May last year, while the pilot had ejected safely.
In an accident in Bengaluru on 19 February 2019, an aircraft had collided with another during drills, killing an Indian military pilot and injuring two others.
The same year, an IAF AN-32 transport aircraft had crashed on 11 June in Arunachal Pradesh, killing 13 people on-board.
At least five members of the IAF died on 6 October 2017 after an M-17 helicopter crashed in the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.
Six years ago, 10 members of India's Border Security Force were killed when a paramilitary plane had crashed in New Delhi.
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