New Delhi: The body of Indian defence chief General Bipin Rawat arrived in New Delhi on Thursday, one day after he and 12 others were killed in a helicopter crash near a military academy.
Rawat, 63, was travelling with his wife and other senior officers when their aircraft crashed in a forest in southern Tamil Nadu state, killing all but one soldier on board.
His body arrived in the capital for Friday’s funeral after a solemn ceremony near the accident site at an army base, where an honour guard laid wreaths by the coffins of the victims.
“The last rites of the Chief of Defence Staff will be performed with full military honours,” defence minister Rajnath Singh told parliament.
Rawat was India’s first chief of defence staff, a position that the government established in 2019, and was seen as close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
He was an outspoken and hugely popular officer who came from a military family and had already survived a helicopter accident in 2015, with minor injuries.
The general was headed to the Defence Services Staff College to address students and faculty on Wednesday when the Mi-17 chopper crashed in foggy conditions.
India’s air force is investigating what caused the accident.
“We rescued as many people as we could. But it was very difficult,” said Sahayaraj, an eyewitness to the crash. “The whole area was on fire and we couldn’t go too close to it.”
Captain Varun Singh, the sole survivor of the crash, remained in a critical condition and had been flown to Bangalore to continue his treatment at a military hospital, local media reported.
Enquiry
A ‘tri service’ enquiry has been ordered over the crash of the Indian Air Force Mi-17V5 helicopter that claimed the lives of Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, his wife and 11 other defence personnel, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh informed the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
The enquiry will be headed by Air Marshal Manvendra Singh, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Training Command.
Giving his statement in the Upper House a few minutes after the proceedings started in the House for the day, Singh stated “an enquiry in the incident has been ordered by Indian Air Force, headed by Air Marshal Manvendra Singh, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Training Command.”
Villager among first to reach crash site
A villager, who was among the group of people who first reached the helicopter crash site at Kattari Park in Tamil Nadu’s Coonoor, on Thursday said that Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat, was alive when they found him and was asking for water.
Talking to media persons at Coonoor, Sivakumar said: “We reached the spot immediately after the crash and found three people alive and of them, one was asking for water. We didn’t have water but we immediately put the three of them on separate blankets and took them to the Wellington Army hospital.”
He, however said that he did not know that it was General Rawat and could only identify him when the photographs of the late officer came out.
Sivakumar, Krishna Moorthy, and M. Ravikumar were the first people to reach the spot on hearing the crash, only to find the copter burning.
