The weather condition in Coonoor at the time of the Indian Air Force (IAF) Mi-17V5 helicopter crash in which Chief of the Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and 13 others died on December 8 was intermittently misty, the complainant in the police case and Village Administrative Officer Arul Rathna told The Hindu .
Asked about the visibility in the area, she said the weather was off and on misty, and visibility would change every now and then on the fateful day.
Going by eyewitness accounts and what Ms. Rathna said, about a dozen youth from a village abutting the helicopter crash site and some volunteers at Coonoor in the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu risked their lives to rescue the defence officers from the chopper that was engulfed by flames.
Little did they know that Gen. Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and other senior defence officers were on board the ill-fated helicopter that crashed into a deep valley minutes before it was to have landed on the campus of the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington.
While some poured buckets of water on the rising flames that emanated from an explosion, others reached out to the victims trapped in the mangled remains of the helicopter.
“They did not know who Gen. Bipin Rawat was…they just went ahead braving the intensifying fire to help the passengers. Some even suffered injuries in the rescue work,” Ms. Rathna said.
Ms. Rathna gave in writing to the Upper Coonoor police that she saw the helicopter on fire and some passengers lying dead, after which a case under Section 174 (unnatural death) of the Criminal Procedure Code was registered.
Chopper exploded
“The villagers were the first to respond, followed by medical teams and army personnel. By the time I reached the crash site, two bodies were being carried away…I don’t know if Gen Rawat was among them. We stood a little away as the helicopter exploded. We were scared…,” Ms. Rathna explained.
Asked whether Gen. Rawat was seen alive and if he had identified himself to one of the rescuers, Ms. Rathna said she could not identify the Chief of Defence Staff. “Though some are saying that the victims cried for help in Tamil, I don’t think the passengers knew [to speak] Tamil,” she said.
The VAO said she had recommended the names of the brave villagers to the authorities concerned for the 2022 Republic Day honours.
In the First Information Report, the Upper Coonoor police recorded the statement by Ms. Rathna, VAO, Coonoor Rural, as saying that she was informed a helicopter had crashed at Nanjappachathram by the Village Assistant Karunakaran at 12.10 p.m. When she reached the spot at 12.35 p.m., the helicopter was gutted and some bodies were lying there with burns.
