Surender Singh, O P Jindal killed in crash

Jindal’s friend Ved Goyal and police head constable Vinod Kumar, also on board the Eurocopter EC-120 of the Jindal Group, were injured when it crashed in a field around 12.30 pm.

Goyal and Kumar, admitted to a private hospital here, were likely to be flown to New Delhi.

The last rites of Surender Singh, 59, and Jindal, 75, will be held with full state honours in Bhiwani and Hissar respectively. The Haryana government has declared two days’ state mourning.

Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said: ‘‘It’s a big loss not only for Haryana but also for me at a personal level. I have lost two colleagues, two invaluable friends.’’

In New Delhi, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had instituted an inquiry into the crash. He said the helicopter was three years old, had clocked over 100 hours of flying time and the pilot was an experienced hand.

The helicopter, which took off from Chandigarh at 11.32 am, had reported over Sarsawa ATC near Saharanpur at 12.17 pm. It lost contact with the ATC when it was 15 nautical miles away from Sarsawa, officials said.

The injured Goyal was quoted as saying ‘‘at around 12.30 pm, the pilot told us that the engine of the helicopter had failed.’’

Saharanpur SSP S A Rizvi said: ‘‘The statements of the injured and the last radio message by the pilot point to a technical snag.’’ But he added that only an inquiry by the DGCA could explain what went wrong.

In Berakhari village, where the chopper went down, 23-year-old Raju recalled how, while working in the fields, he had heard a shrill sound. ‘‘At first I mistook it for a siren from the mill. But when I looked up, I saw a helicopter wobbling in the sky.’’

The helicopter, recalled Berakhari’s Sukhdev Singh, ploughed through treetops and nearly crashed into a house. ‘‘Somehow the pilot changed the course of the helicopter and saved the house. It then turned almost 180 degrees and tried to land in an empty field. But it fell like a stone.’’

The impact was so great that the chopper bounced into the air before crashing down again, breaking into pieces.

Eyewitnesses said there was no fire in the chopper as it came down. ‘‘There was a lot of smoke and noise,’’ recalled Raju who used his only arm—the other was lost in a thresher—to pull out Goyal.

‘‘He was alive and was able to talk. He identified himself. By this time, others had joined me. We also pulled out the pilot and the policeman. The other two persons (Surender Singh and Jindal) were dead.’’