A video footage of a helicopter, flying low and dropping some powder-kind materials into the Cauvery River, being widely circulated through WhatsApp application in Srirangapatna, sent the district police into a tizzy on Tuesday.
The 44-seconds video was apparently recorded in the first or second week of February by a person who had come for a holy-bath at Sangam near Srirangapatna, one of the sacred places on the bank of Cauvery. The footage went viral on Tuesday morning and later aired by some television channels.
According to the television channels, the dumped materials were ‘Asthi’ (ashes) of a dead person. Sangam and Paschima Vahini on the banks of Cauvery are considered as sacred places and hundreds of persons visit there every month to immerse the ashes of the dead.
“Some people had arrived in the aircraft and immersed the ashes, threw some flowers and disappeared in a few seconds,” this is what the people in Sangam say about the helicopter.
Nevertheless no one has any details about the person who recorded the video and date/time of the appearance of the helicopter.
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The district police, considering the appearance of the helicopter a mystery, conducted a preliminary inquiry on Tuesday.
“We do not know about the helicopter. We have asked the local residents to provide more information about the video/helicopter,” Geetha Prasanna, Deputy Superintendent of Police (Srirangapatna sub-division), told The Hindu .
Meanwhile, Mandya Superintendent of Police Bhushan Gulabrao Borase had contacted the Department of Civil Aviation at Bengaluru and Mysuru to dig information about the helicopter. But, he could not get any information about it.
According to the Civil Aviation officials, permission is required to land the helicopter, but not to fly.
Anyway, the department will try to gather information about the issue, Mr. Borase told The Hindu .
