Monday, Mar 04, 2002
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The Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu, paying floral tributes to the Lok Sabha Speaker, G.M.C. Balayogi, at the Eluru Government Hospital on Sunday. - Photo: Ch. Vijaya Bhaskar
VIJAYAWADA, MARCH 3. The Lok Sabha Speaker, G.M.C. Balayogi, died when a private helicopter in which he was travelling crashed while trying to make an emergency landing at Kovvadalanka village in Kolleru area of Krishna district this morning. His assistant secretary, Sathi Raju, and pilot, G. V. Menon, were also killed. It was literally a death call for Mr. Balayogi who cancelled his scheduled journey by train from Eluru to Visakhapatnam last night at the behest of his friend and Christian missionary, S. A. Paul. Mr. Paul had persuaded him to stay back in Bhimavaram and offered to fly him to Hyderabad in his helicopter today to catch his flight to Delhi in the morning. The helicopter developed some technical snag soon after take off at Bhimavaram at 7.15 a.m. The pilot made frantic efforts to land and hovered in vain over Kovvadalanka village, hardly 30 km away. He could not find a safe landing place among the fish ponds dotting the entire landscape. Poor visibility due to fog compounded his problems. The pilot finally tried to land on the narrow stretch of a pond bund but failed. When he tried to go up again, he hit a coconut tree and the propeller at the rear end broke. The copter plunged into the pond. Mr. Balayogi suffered multiple injuries on the skull, legs and hands and was found dead on the seat. Mr. Balayogi came to West Godavari district on Saturday to visit the ancient Venkateswara temple at Dwaraka Tirumala. Many other programmes had been arranged for him at Eluru and Tanuku. After his dinner at Tanuku, he wanted to catch either the Godavari or the Gowathmi Express and reach Hyderabad or Visakhapatnam to board a flight for Delhi. `You can smell my hand' Mr. Paul, who was camping at Bhimavaram for prayer-healing, called Mr. Balayogi and requested him to go over and meet the Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee, who was visiting India. Mr. Balayogi obliged them. They wanted him to have dinner with them but Mr. Balayogi declined saying he had already had his dinner.``You can smell my hand,'' he told them. While the two Christians left Bhimavaram for Visakhapatnam by separate helicopters, Mr. Balayogi left for Hyderabad by the spare helicopter. According to an eye-witness, Thirupathi Venkanna, who was feeding fish in his three-acre pond when the copter crashed, ``the chopper hovered over our ponds for some time before trying to get down on the bund of an adjacent pond owned by Anjaneyulu. Fearing danger, Anjaneyulu jumped into the pond. The chopper had almost touched the water but rose again to hit a coconut tree... ``It was cinematic. We panicked as there was smoke. The smoke subsided within five minutes and we went near the copter. We saw the pilot breathing his last and the two other occupants were dead.'' Manikyalarao, a farmer, learnt from the diary on the spot that the deceased was Mr. Balayogi. Using his cellphone, he informed police at Akiveedu and two others whose numbers were found in the diary. Police arrived soon after ``making us realise that the deceased was a big man,'' Mr. Venkanna said. The farmers extricated the bodies and carried them to the Elurr-Bhimavaram road, 2 km away, by a country boat used for feeding the fish and handed them over to the officials. Body to be kept in Parliament Our Special Correspondent reports from New Delhi: The body of Mr. Balayogi will be brought to the Capital tomorrow morning and kept at the Parliament House from 8 a.m. to 10.45 a.m. to enable the parliamentarians and staff members to pay their tributes. This was decided at a meeting called by the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Pramod Mahajan, this evening. The body will then be flown to his hometown in Andhra Pradesh for the funeral.
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