New Delhi, October 30
The bodies of three Army officers, including that of General Officer Commanding of the Sixth Mountain Division, Major-General D.P. Singh, was found today near the Sino-Indian border, more than 24 hours after the Cheetah helicopters on which they were on a reccee mission went missing.
The charred bodies of Major General D.P. Singh, his aide Lt-Col B.K. Pande and the pilot Captain Arjun Sardana were found by a rescue team of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police at 11.40 a.m., about 7 km from the Manna Pass near the Sino-Indian border, an Army spokesperson said here today.
An army aviation helicopter brought the three bodies from the crash site to Joshimath.
The Cheetah helicopter of the Army Aviation Corps went missing from near the border with China beyond Joshimath yesterday morning and lost radio contact at 9.30 am yesterday.
The helicopter took off from the Bareilly base at about 7.30 in the morning on a routine recee mission.
Ground search parties and Army Aviation Corps and the Indian Air Force’s aerial search parties were despatched to the region to locate the wreckage which was spotted late last evening by one of the ground search parties.
This is the worst Army aviation disaster in the past 10 years. In 1994 an Army Aviation Corps helicopter with a Major-General on board along with one Lt-Colonel and three Majors had crashed in the Sikkim region.
