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 03.06.2019/
13:00 LT
India/
16 kilometres north of
Lipo in Arunachal Pradesh/ near Gatte village
A rescue operation had commenced at the crash site of the aircraft that
went missing on June 3 and was spotted 16 kilometres north of Lipo in
Arunachal Pradesh by Mi-17 helicopters on Tuesday. The "black box" of
the aircraft has been recovered from the crash site and it will help the
investigators reconstruct the events leading to the crash.
The Russian-origin aircraft went missing on the afternoon of June 3,
around 33 minutes after taking off from Jorhat in Assam for Mechuka in
Arunachal Pradesh.
After eight days of a massive search operation, the wreckage of the
plane was spotted by an IAF chopper on Tuesday at a height of 12,000 ft
near Gatte village on the border of Siang and Shi-Yomi districts.
"IAF pays tribute to the brave air-warriors who lost their life in the
line of duty. IAF is making all efforts to recover the mortal remains.
No effort is being spared in ensuring expeditious transfer of the mortal
remains of the air-warriors to their parent base at Jorhat," the IAF
said.
An AN-32 aircraft
(K2752) had crashed near a village in West Siang district of
Arunachal Pradesh in June 2019 in which 13 defence personnel were
killed. The aircraft had crashed about 30 km from Mechuka.
Thick vegetation and inhospitable terrain coupled with inclement weather
had adversely affected the aerial search operation.
After the wreckage was spotted, helicopters were sent but they could not
land as the crash site has a steep slope and thick forest.
Two km from the crash site, an area was designated and a camp
was established for helicopters to land with the recovery parties.
On Jun 12, a team of nine IAF personnel, four Army Special Forces
personnel and two local mountaineers were dropped at the campsite. Eight
of them trekked to the crash site on Friday and they found that all the
13 people on board the plane did not survive the accident.
"On June 13, eight members of the rescue team reached the crash site in
search of the survivors. Unfortunately no air-warrior survived the
crash," the IAF said in a statement.
Those killed were:
1. Wing Commander GM Charles,
2. Squadron Leader H Vinod,
3. Flight Lieutenant MK Garg,
4. Flight Lieutenant Sunit Mohanty,
5. Flight Lieutenant Ashish Tanwar,
6. Flight Lieutenant R Thapa,
7. Warrant Officer KK Mishra,
8. Sergeant Anoop Kumar,
9. Corporal Sherin,
10. Leading Aircraftman SK Singh,
11. Leading Aircraftman Pankaj,
12. non-combatant Putali
13. non-combatant Rajesh Kumar.
The site in Arunachal Pradesh, where the
military An-32 plane crashed
Medium transporter An-32 is the workhorse of the IAF
and it operates around 105 of them. They are in the process of being
upgraded. In 2009, India finalised a plan for a major upgrade and
life-extension of up to 40 years for the entire fleet of An-32 under a
$400-million deal with Ukraine. So far, 46 aircraft have been upgraded,
of which 40 were handled in Ukraine.
A decade back,
in June 2009, an An-32 on a routine sortie involving 13
personnel crashed near Tato village close to the Mechuka ALG. Seven of
these personnel were from the IAF and the rest from the Army.
In July 2016, an An-32 on a routine weekly courier flight from Chennai
to Port Blair, carrying 23 personnel and six crew, went missing after
take-off. So far, it has not been traced.
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