BENGALURU: Five Bengaluru residents, including a police inspector and four others, have died when a helicopter crashed near Joshimath in Uttarakhand on Friday.The pilot, Himanshu, was also killed in the crash.The deceased passengers have been identified as police inspector Arun Salunke, HS Nataraj, K Sudheer, Shankar Gowda and Pratap. Most of them were advocates, according to the information available.The bodies have been found but not yet recovered, said Chamoli Superintendent of Police Surjit Singh Panwar, news agency PTI reported.Sources said the five had reached Uttarakhand on Wednesday and boarded the helicopter on Friday morning. The crash occurred near Joshimath, around 2.21pm, officials said.The helicopter, operated by Trans Bharat Aviation Pvt Ltd, was flying from Badrinath to Sahastradhara in Dehradun, PTI reported.It took off at around 1.14pm and lost communication while flying over the Joshimath valley, according to the Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority (UCADA).The chopper crashed into a hillside near JP Power House, close to Marwari Bridge.Teams from the district administration, police, State Disaster Response Force, Army and Indo-Tibetan Border Police were sent to the site for rescue operations.Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said he was monitoring the situation and had directed officials to ensure that critically injured passengers were airlifted to a higher-level medical facility.UCADA also said that the entire fleet of Trans Bharat Aviation had been grounded as a precautionary measure.
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