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4 Armymen die in Sikkim chopper crash

Gangtok, April 22
Four Army personnel, including two majors, were found dead in Sikkim on Friday with the wreckage of their helicopter being found a day after it went missing close to the Chinese border, the officials said. An army spokesperson said the rescue teams on Friday morning spotted the wreckage near the Yumthang Valley, about 160 km northeast of the state capital Gangtok.

"All the four personnel on board were dead. There were two pilots of the rank of major and two technicians, one of whom was a junior commissioned officer," the official said. The Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) Dhruv of the Army Aviation Corps had taken off from the Sewak Road base in Siliguri on Thursday on a routine training exercise close to the Chinese border when it lost radio contact with another helicopter flying in tandem.

Earlier, the search operations had to be called off due to bad weather. "The rescue teams and helicopters were again pressed into service early on Friday and we located the wreckage. The bodies were brought to the base camp," the official said. This is the first Dhruv with the Indian armed forces to have crashed since the fleet was inducted in 1998. The Dhruv is specifically designed and meant for high-altitude missions. On Tuesday, 17 people were killed and six survived after a commercial helicopter crashed and burst into flames just before landing at one of India's high altitude helipads in Arunachal Pradesh. — PTI

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