Rescue workers drew a blank in the search for a private helicopter missing for the sixth day after there was no trace of the chopper even at the two probable sites.
RAIPUR: Rescue workers drew a blank in the search for a private helicopter missing for the sixth day today after there was no trace of the chopper even at the two probable sites identified by remote sensing satellites.
"The National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) had identified two spots yesterday as probable sites where the missing copter could have been found but today ground forces found nothing from there," a top Aviation Department official said here on the latest efforts to locate the Ran Air helicopter which had four crew on board.
The NRSA had taken several images yesterday and after analysing them identified two probable sites, one 10 km and another 25 km away from Dantewada district headquarters of Chhattisgarh, the official said.
The NRSA had been asked to take up the search after operations by two helicopters from the IAF and one each from Andhra Pradesh and Chhatisgarh did not yield any result.
"After all aerial searches yielded zero result, the NRSA was approached by the state government to take aerial photographs of the likely route of Bell-430, which went missing within 90 minutes of taking off from Hyderabad on Sunday last," the official said.
"The NRSA report was the only ray of hope for the search party as both the aerial and ground searches have failed to trace the helicopter with two pilots and an equal number of technical staff on board," members of the search party said here.
Chief Pilot V P Singh, co-pilot R Gaur, flight engineer Santosh Kumar and technician Ashwini Kumar were on board the chopper, which took off from Hyderabad at 3 PM on Sunday. All contacts with the copter were lost at about 4 PM.
The helicopter was supposed to land at regional headquarters of Bastar at Jagdalpur in Chhattisgarh at 4.30 pm for refuelling, which never happened, and whereabouts of the Bell-430 had not been known to either Andhra Pradesh or Chhatisgarh, officials said.
Chhattisgarh Government had hired the helicopter from Ranbaxy-owned Ran Air to take its Home Minister Ram Vichar Netam to Ranchi from Raipur.
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