Debris of IAF chopper spotted in Arunachal, no word on pilots
The wreckage of the Indian Air Force chopper that went off the radar on Tuesday while on flood rescue mission in Arunachal Pradesh was spotted in the frontier state’s Papum Pare district on Wednesday afternoon.
Army, police and the paramilitary Indo-Tibetan Border Police personnel engaged in rescue operations, however, could not reach the spot because of the terrain, rain and poor visibility.
A radio message on Wednesday from the district’s extra assistant commissioner M Taipodia to the state’s chief secretary and other officials said the debris of the IAF’s advanced light helicopter had been spotted in an “inaccessible deep gorge” at Sopo Yuha about 3pm. The spot, near Hostalam village, is about 30 km north of Itanagar. Neither the district administration nor defence officials could provide an update on the three IAF crew members and a policeman who was on board the illfated chopper. Wing Commander MS Dhillon was the pilot of the helicopter.
“We have deployed five police teams to locate the chopper. Efforts to reach the spot will resume Thursday,” inspectorgeneral of police (law and order) Nabin Payeng said. The fate of the pilots will be known only after the rescue teams reach the spot, he said.
Officials said the rescue teams combed the areas along the route the chopper was to have used after taking off at 3:50pm from Pilputu helipad near Sagalee for the heliport at Naharlagun, about 13km from Itanagar. “It was evacuating people stranded due to landslides caused by rainfall,” Tezpur-based defence spokesperson Lt Col Sombit Ghosh said.
The chopper had gone out for flood rescue operations from the IAF base in central Assam’s Jorhat. In a tweet, Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Pema Khandu said until it went missing the IAF chopper evacuated 169 people from Sagalee and Dambuk areas.
Unpredictable weather often makes chopper travel risky in the state. Almost at the same time when the IAF chopper went missing, Union minister Kiren Rijiju had a close shave when a Mi-17 helicopter he was in had to land in a college field in Itanagar.
A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli was arrested on Tuesday after a 20-year-old woman filed a case of rape against him and alleged he promised to marry her and also get her a job, police said on Wednesday.
According to reports, the woman lodged the complaint after a video clip of Ravindra Bawanthade, a school teacher and BJP’s Gadchiroli district general secretary, kissing her in a moving luxury bus went viral across the state on Tuesday.
Bawanthade was also the party in-charge of Armori assembly constituency in the district during the 2014 elections.
Reports said the incident happened when Bawanthade was returning from Nagpur to Gadchiroli in the bus along with the woman a few days ago. The footage from the close circuit television camera installed in the bus shows the leader kissing and forcing himself upon her in the presence of passengers.
Bawanthade was arrested by the Nagbhid Police at Bramhapuri on Tuesday morning and taken into police custody until July 6 for further interrogation, reports said. The police booked the BJP leader under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including 376 for the offence of rape.
Gadchiroli Lok Sabha member Ashok Nete, however, claimed Bawanthade is no longer an office-bearer of the BJP.
“As he repeatedly failed to attend party meetings, he was removed from the post of party general secretary,” Nete said.
THE CHOPPER WAS DEPLOYED FOR FLOOD RESCUE OPERATIONS FROM THE IAF BASE IN CENTRAL ASSAM’S JORHAT DISTRICT