The Hindu : Fresh probe sought into IAF copter crash

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 29, 2002

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Fresh probe sought into IAF copter crash

Ahmedabad March 28. The National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) has urged the Centre to institute a fresh inquiry into the November 12, 2000 crash of an Indian Air Force helicopter in the Rann of Kutch, saying that the father of the pilot, Anil Sharma, who was killed in the mishap, has charged the IAF with ``deliberately concealing'' the facts relating to the cause of the crash.

V.K. Saxena, president of the Ahmedabad-based Council, in a letter to the Minister of State for Defence, Harin Pathak, said H.P. Sharma, father of the pilot, had informed the NCCL that he felt that the MI-8 helicopter was shot down by Pakistani. He raised certain important questions which he felt the IAF had not taken into consideration at the time of the Court of Inquiry due to ``obvious reasons.'' Copies of the letter were released to the press here today.

Besides Anil Sharma, those who died in the crash were the Border Security Force DIG, S.C. Yadav, and four other BSF officials. The helicopter, which had taken off from Koteshwar in Kutch district, was flying inside Indian territory.

Twentyeight hours after it ``lost contact'' with the control room, its wreckage was located 17 km inside Indian territory, about 10 km from the place where a Pakistani plane, Atlantique, was shot down by IAF fighters in 1999.

While the IAF maintained that the helicopter crashed due to manual error, another version was that it was shot down by Pakistani boats, the letter stated.

Mr. Saxena said the proposed probe should ascertain whether the helicopter was shot down or had crashed due to manual error, whether the crash was known to the Air Traffic Control, whether there was a real loss of contact or was it manipulated, why Koteshwar (the starting point) was not taken as base for starting the search, why Lakhpat, being the only and nearest BSF post, was not taken for starting search operations, why the helicopter positioned at Nalia or Bhuj (50 and 80 km from the crash site) was not pressed into service by the IAF (had it done so, the wreckage would have been found within an hour), why the IAF chose Jamnagar (200 km from the site) for search operation and why it took nine hours to search for the wreckage.

The pictures released by the IAF on the crash did not corroborate its version that the chopper fell from a lower height and crashed because one of the rotors went down into the water, Mr. Saxena pointed out and said the entire episode made one suspect that the IAF knew about the shooting down of the chopper and the delay in starting the search operation was deliberate.

— UNI

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