Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 30: All six passengers in a private helicopter including the pilot, were killed when it crashed into a hillside on the Joshimath-Badrinath route in Chamoli district in Uttarakhand on a rained out overcast Friday afternoon, the Uttarakhand disaster management officials said.
The helicopter, which took off from Badrinath around 1:14 pm amid snowfall, lost contact near the Hathi Parvat area. The chopper crashed into a hillside near the JP Power House near Marwari Bridge around 2.20 pm, officials said. It was not confirmed whether it was returning from the Badrinath shrine. Teams of the Chamoli administration, police, SDRF, Army and ITBP have been dispatched to the site for relief and rescue operations, they said.
The Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority (UCADA) said a Trans Bharat Aviation Pvt Ltd’s helicopter bearing call sign VT-HCX, operating from Badrinath to Sahastradhara, Dehradun, which took off at approximately 1.15 p.m., went missing around 2.20 p.m. All six passengers – Prathapa, Arun, Shankar Gowda, Sudheer K, HS Natraja and pilot Capt Himanshu – were killed. Initial reports said all the five passengers in the ill-fated chopper were from Bengaluru.
“Trans Bharat Aviation Pvt Ltd’s helicopter bearing call sign VT-HCX, operating from Badrinath to Sahastradhara, Dehradun, which took off at approximately 13:14 hours has been reportedly missing. The helicopter lost communication when it was flying over Joshimath valley. At the same time, the tracking system could no longer track the helicopter, and its current location has not been ascertained yet,” Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority said in an earlier statement. As a precautionary measure, the entire fleet of M/s Trans Bharat Aviation Pvt Ltd has been grounded, the statement added.
UCADA CEO Prateek Jain earlier said details about the passengers were being verified, with initial reports saying they were from Bengaluru. He said that the location where the helicopter has crashed has not been traced yet. “As soon as the weather clears, another rescue helicopter will be sent to locate the missing chopper,” he added.
Arun Salunke, an inspector with the Bengaluru Central Crime Branch (CCB), was among those killed in the crash. According to CCB sources, Mr Salunke was on a trip to Uttarakhand with his friends. This is the second time in two months that the Bengaluru police department has lost an inspector. On August 28, Ravi K.B., a cybercrime investigator, died in a bus accident in Madhya Pradesh.
The Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister G. Parameshwara, who is also Revenue Minister, said on X, “Concerned to learn that a helicopter travelling from Badrinath to Dehradun has lost contact, with five passengers from Karnataka reportedly on board. I immediately contacted the Chamoli district SP and sought an update on the safety of the passengers. The local administration is carrying out search and rescue efforts to locate the helicopter.”
An analysis by Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) showed that there were nine occurrences, including eight accidents and one serious incident, in the Char Dham sector during the 2015-2025 period, with at least 1 accident or serious incident every year from 2022 onwards.
Last year, there were four accidents – two of them fatal – which was also the maximum number of accidents that occurred in a single year, AAIB said. In June last year, seven people were killed as the chopper flying them from the Kedarnath temple to Guptkashi in Uttarakhand crashed in a forest.