The Aryan Aviation helicopter that crashed in poor visibility on Sunday, killing the pilot and all six passengers, had begun operating nearly an hour before the time allotted by the authorities, an FIR lodged against two company managers says.
The crash — tentatively attributed to a tree hit — has spotlighted longstanding allegations that Char Dham Yatra chopper operators were recklessly ignoring weather risks and endangering lives in their greed to fly more trips and make more money.
According to the FIR, the Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority and the directorate-general of civil aviation had allocated the 6am-7am slot to Aryan Aviation to fly the helicopter.
However, the chopper began its operations at 5.11am and met with the accident at 5.24am, says the FIR, registered on a complaint from Rudraprayag revenue sub-inspector Rajiv Nakholia.
“Vikas Tomar, base manager of Aryan Aviation, and Kaushik Pathak, accountability manager, ignored the government directives,” Rajesh Singh Kathait, the officer in charge of Sonprayag police station, said.
Pathak told reporters: “We express our condolences and have announced an ex gratia of ₹5 lakh each for the family members of the seven victims. We’ll cooperate with theinquiry.”
On Sunday, the Uttarakhand government had said the helicopter took off from Guptkashi at 5.10am, landed at Kedarnath at 5.18am, and left at 5.19am (with another set of passengers) for Guptkashi before crashing near Gaurikund.
Sources had then said this one-minute gap between the two flights was utterly inadequate to check the chopper’s fitness, and bore testimony to the private operators’ greed and recklessness.
‘Tree hit’
Nandan Singh Rajwar, Rudraprayag district disaster management officer, said preliminary inquiry suggested that the helicopter was “flying low in poor visibility above the Gauri Mai Khark area in Gaurikund on Sunday morning and hit a tree”.
He added: “A man and a woman informed us that they saw smoke above Gaurikund town. Reaching the spot where the helicopter fell was an extremely difficult task.”
The Pushkar Singh Dhami government has handed the crash inquiry over to the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau. However, many fear the exercise could prove academic, for the state government is yet to make public or act on the probe reports on the multiple chopper crashes or emergency landings that have blighted the Char Dham route.
Four such incidents — one of them killing six people — occurred on the pilgrimage trail between May 8 and June 7 this year.
Another Aryan Aviation helicopter was involved in a crash on October 18, 2022, which, like Sunday’s accident, killed the pilot and six passengers and happened while the chopper was returning from Kedarnath to Guptkashi. That chopper had hit a mountain in the Garunchatti area.
That probe report too has been gathering dust, sources said.