ONGC chopper carrying five Dy GMs falls into sea

A Pawan Hans chopper, carrying five senior officials of the Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and two pilots, crashed into the Arabian sea near Dahanu. Four bodies were fished out by the Coast Guard at the time of this report going to press; search operations continue for the remaining three.

The five passengers — R Saravanan, P N Sreenivasan, Jose Antony, Pankaj Garg and V K Bindulal Babu — were deputy general managers reporting for site duty. They were on board a French-made Dauphin SA365N3.

"The last contact with the Mumbai air traffic control was at 10.35 am," says an airport official. When communication with the pilots was lost, an ONGC helicopter and five speedboats were pressed into service for search operations.

The Coast Guard and Indian Navy also deployed choppers and rescue boats.

"Over 100 ONGC employees fly to our offshore site and back every day. Today (on Saturday) the weather was good and there were no visibility problems, yet this happened," says T D Majumdar, general secretary of ONGC Workers Union, Agartala. "It is very sad that we lost five of our senior officials."