Five Bengaluru residents, including a police inspector and several advocates, were killed when a helicopter crashed near Joshimath in Uttarakhand on Friday afternoon. The pilot, identified as Himanshu, also died in the accident.
The passengers were identified as police inspector Arun Salunke, HS Nataraj, K Sudheer, Shankar Gowda and Pratap. Most of the passengers were advocates, according to information reported by the Times of India and news agency PTI.
The helicopter, operated by Trans Bharat Aviation Pvt Ltd, was flying from Badrinath to Sahastradhara in Dehradun. It took off at about 1.14pm and lost communication while flying over the Joshimath valley, according to the Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority.
The crash occurred at around 2.21pm near JP Power House, close to Marwari Bridge, when the helicopter struck a hillside. Chamoli Superintendent of Police Surjit Singh Panwar said the bodies had been located but had not yet been recovered at the time of the report.
The five Bengaluru residents had reached Uttarakhand on Wednesday and boarded the helicopter on Friday morning, sources said. The flight was part of the region’s helicopter connectivity used by visitors travelling between pilgrimage and tourist locations in the Himalayan state.
Teams from the district administration, police, State Disaster Response Force, Army and Indo-Tibetan Border Police were deployed at the crash site for rescue and recovery operations. The difficult terrain around Joshimath has made access to the site a key part of the emergency response.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said he was monitoring the situation and directed officials to ensure that critically injured passengers were airlifted to a higher-level medical facility. However, the report identified all five Bengaluru passengers and the pilot as dead, while recovery of the bodies was still under way.
The Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority said the entire fleet of Trans Bharat Aviation had been grounded as a precautionary measure. Further official details on the cause of the crash, the aircraft’s flight record and the next steps in the investigation were not immediately available. Recovery teams and district authorities were continuing operations at the crash site.
