All 13 air-warriors on board an AN-32 transport aircraft that crashed in a heavily forested mountainous area in Arunachal Pradesh 10 days back were killed, the Indian Air Force said Thursday.
Official sources said the “black box” of theaircraft has been recovered from the crash site and it will help theinvestigators reconstruct the events leading to the crash.
The IAF has already ordered a court of inquiry into theaccident, one of the worst involving a military aircraft in recent years.
The Russian-origin aircraft went missing on the afternoon ofJune 3, around 33 minutes after taking off from Jorhat in Assam for Menchuka inArunachal Pradesh.
After eight days of a massive search operation, the wreckageof the plane was spotted by an IAF chopper on Tuesday at a height of 12,000 ftnear Gatte village on the border of Siang and Shi-Yomi districts.
“On 13 Jun 19, eight members of the rescue team reachedthe crash site in search of the survivors. Unfortunately no air-warriorsurvived the crash,” the IAF said in a statement.
The air-warriors who were killed in the crash were WingCommander GM Charles, Squadron Leader H Vinod, Flight Lieutenant MK Garg,Flight Lieutenant S Mohanty, Flight Lieutenant A Tanwar, Flight Lieutenant RThapa, Warrant Officer KK Mishra, Sergeant Anoop Kumar, Corporal Sherin, LeadingAircraftman SK Singh and Leading Aircraftman Pankaj.Two non-combatants Putali and Rajesh Kumar alsodied in the crash.