The government has received reports of a possible “explosion’’ on top of a hill called Eagle’s Nest in West Kameng district in Arunachal Pradesh which could be linked to the missing helicopter of state chief minister Dorjee Khandu. A total of six helicopters were pressed into service on Sunday to locate the copter carrying the CM but to no avail. home secretary G.K. Pillai said that two helicopters flew into the Bhutanese side and four flew over the Indian areas but without any luck.
“We have about 25 search parties scouring along the areas and the Royal Bhutanese Army were conducting the search in their areas. The search operations were focused on the areas where people claim to have seen a helicopter flying around yesterday morning,” he said. Mr Pillai said that the operation will resume early morning and they are hopeful of locating the chief minister’s copter.
Senior government sources said that a team consisting of ITBP, SSB, area SSP, a doctor, magistrate and a driver, who claims to have heard the explosion himself, set off to the area on Sunday afternoon at 2 pm for search and rescue operations. The team will be camping in the thickly wooded area on Sunday night and search the area on Monday morning. Reinforcements will reach the area by late evening on Sunday, a government official said.
“A driver heard the explosion and his boss got in touch with the Itanagar police on the phone and the team was dispatched soon after to search the area along with the driver,” a government official said.
Meanwhile, IAF copters are being deployed to search other areas where some “eye-witnesses’’ have claimed to have seen the copter. A Bhutanese relative of a bank manager in Arunachal Pradesh and some school children in Bhutan claim to have seen the copter and informed the Indian embassy there, government sources said. The sources said that these two set of eye-witnesses have identified the same area which will be thoroughly searched by the IAF.
It may be recalled that the chief minister’s copter had gone missing on Saturday after taking off from Tawang for Itanagar.
An internal probe into the conflicting reports coming out on Saturday has revealed that a senior state police official had informed the 24/7 control room in the Union home ministry of the spotting of the chief minister’s copter based on “rumours’’ , and the error was quickly corrected after verification.