A Pawan Hans helicopter carrying two pilots, one crew member and an IAS officer went missing near Tirap district in Arunachal Pradesh on Tuesday morning.
The Pawan Hans helicopter carrying the Deputy Commissioner of Tirap, Kamlesh Joshi and the three others were on their way to longding district in Arunachal Pradesh from Khonsa in Tirap district. District administration officials in longding said that the chopper went missing near Deomali in Tirap district.
The helicopter was on a routine passenger sortie to longding and was to return to Mohanbari Airport in Dibrugarh when it lost contact, they said.
Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister, Nabam Tuki, on Tuesday convened an emergency meeting with the State Home Minister, Civil Aviation Minister, Chief Secretary, DGP and legislators of Tirap, Changlang and longding on the issue and asked that search and rescue operations to track the missing chopper be intensified.
Although the Indian Air Force (IAF) launched an aerial search operation immediately after the incident, they are yet to trace the chopper and the passengers boarding it.
“The search operation continued till the daylight and called off now. We are going to resume the search operation again tomorrow morning,” said a senior official of Changlang district. It may be mentioned here that the Pawan Hans choppers had to suspend its operations in Arunachal Pradesh and some other parts of the northeast region after some major crashes in 2011 in the hilly State. Former Arunachal Pradesh CM Dorjee Khandu and four others had lost their lives in a crash of Pawan Hans chopper in a remote location in Indo-China border in the State in 2011.