Although the Centre and the Andhra Pradesh government are sparing no effort to locate Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy’s chopper with aerial reconnaissance and satellite imagery, it is pertinent to note that it was human intelligence and not high-end technology that helped locate two chopper crash sites in recent times.
The two choppers, one owned by the Chhattisgarh government and the other hired by it, crashed in July 2007 and August 2008. In both instances, the government had pressed into service Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) and helicopters for aerial surveillance, but several sorties yielded no result. Ultimately, tribals helped locate the wreckage.
Chhattisgarh police officers, who monitored the search operations then, said it was extremely difficult to locate any wreckage by scanning the area through binoculars. Also, the possibility of wreckage or a crash-landed chopper would depend solely on weather conditions. A downpour reduces visibility and any kind of ‘low-flying’ would not help, officers say. Thick foliage is another problem that would confront ‘air-search teams.’
Officers surmise that in this season the forest cover in Nallamala would be extremely thick, and it would be difficult to see through the canopy.
In the first crash, the government-owned EC-135 chopper took off from Bhopal on July 14, 2007, to Raipur, and disappeared midway. With rumours of Maoists shooting down the chopper, the Chhattisgarh government spared no effort in locating the wreckage, but failed. A week later, a tribal found the wreckage on top of a hillock near Dammudhara village.
Authorities who trekked into the jungle deduced that the chopper could have been flying low because of inclement weather and crashed into a tree atop the hillock. The pilot, Captain A.S. Sidhu, co-pilot Vikram Savekar, and two other technicians died in the crash.
In the second incident, a chopper (Bell-430) hired by the government took off from the Begumpet airport in Hyderabad on its way to Raipur on August 3, 2008. It lost contact an hour later, triggering suspicions that Maoists might have shot it down in the Bastar forests, as it was their stronghold. The deployment of UAVs and two choppers for aerial reconnaissance did not help.
Three months later, a tribal found the wreckage on a hillock at Kodijuttugutta village in Khammam district. In this case, the police successfully employed the strategy of publishing pictures of helicopters and contacting tribals in weekly shanties, urging them to look for any wreckage. Four persons, including two pilots, were killed in this crash.
