Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Bipin Rawat passed away on Wednesday, 8 December, after Indian Air Force’s highly advanced Mi-17V5 helicopter conveying the military officer, his wife, and other officials, met with a fatal crash in Tamil Nadu’s Coonoor.
CDS Rawat was going to deliver a lecture at the Defence Services Staff College at Wellington and had left New Delhi on Wednesday morning.
Considered one of the most advanced choppers in the world, the Mi-17V5 is a twin-engine Russian-made military transport version of the Mi-8 helicopters regularly used for high-altitude operations.
The chopper’s reliability and safety are why it is one of the most preferred modes of transport for VIPs. However, it is unclear why the crash happened and how.
Here’s what we know.
Krishnaswamy, the first eyewitness near the accident site, was standing outside his home when he heard something approaching from the sky.
He said, "As the helicopter was descending, it caught fire. It crashed into a big tree here and smoke immediately engulfed the area. Then the entire chopper caught fire. I immediately called a boy in the neighbourhood. He called the police and the fire department.”
Moreover, there are no reports of a distress signal being sent before the crash, indicating that the crash was sudden and took place without a warning in low visibility conditions.
Though more details are awaited, low visibility was reported over the area with the weather forecast for Coonoor being "generally cloudy sky with light rain."
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.
Air Chief Marshal Fali H Major, former chief of the Indian Air Force (IAF) who inducted the Mi-17V5 chopper said:
"The flight time from Sulur to Wellington is only 20 to 25 minutes. What could have gone wrong in such a short flight duration is very difficult to determine.”Air Chief Marshal Fali H Major, as quoted by NDTV.
The particular Mi-17V5 chopper had flown around 26 hours without a snag after it was last serviced, as per sources cited by The Indian Express.
Sources were further reported as saying that no system malfunction or snag had been flagged in the last two-three trips, adding that “its history was clear, and there had been no technical failure.”
Further, a retired IAF officer said, “To my mind, it must have been a freak accident because with a helicopter, even if both the engines fail, it is possible to land in a paddy field somewhere given the right conditions,” Indian Express reported.
General Rawat was on the way to Tamil Nadu's Wellington to visit the Defence Staff Academy when the chopper crashed around 10 km from the nearest road.
(With inputs from NDTV and The Indian Express.)
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