Amritsar2 hours ago
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Co-pilot Jayant Joshi. file photo.
The body of the second pilot of the Army’s Rudra helicopter, which crashed in the Ranjit Sagar Dam on August 3, was found on Sunday. The body of Jayant Joshi, co-pilot of HAL Rudra, who crashed on the border of Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, was found 75 days after the incident. Pilot Lt Col AS Bath and co-pilot Jayant Joshi went missing after the accident.
AS Bath’s body was traced 12 days after the accident. Due to being in water for 75 days, the condition of Jayant Joshi’s body has become very bad. His body has been kept at the Army Hospital in Pathankot.
Pilots taking flight training at low altitude
This helicopter of the Army’s Aviation Squadron took off from Mamun Cantt at 10:20 am that day. The helicopter was flying very low above Ranjit Sagar Dam and during that time it crashed. Pilot AS Bath and co-pilot Jayant Joshi were flying this helicopter.
The helicopter was on a training flight at the time of the accident and its pilot was being trained to fly at low altitudes. After the accident, some parts of the chopper were searched the same day, but both the pilots were not found.
Special divers were called from Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh and Kochi for the search operation in Ranjit Sagar Lake.
Army’s biggest search operation in the lake
NDRF and Punjab Police started the rescue operation soon after the accident, but later a team of Navy and Army special divers were engaged in the search operation. There were more than two dozen people in this team.
Special divers were called from Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh and Kochi in the biggest ever search operation conducted in this lake. Apart from this, multi-beam sonar, side scanners, remote operated vehicles and underwater manipulators were also ordered.
The problem due to the large area of the lake
The length of Ranjit Sagar Dam is 25 km and width is around 8 km. It was a very difficult task to trace the missing pilots in such a large area. Due to the colloidal nature of the water of the dam, there was a problem in the search operation.
Simply put, the visibility of water is not more than 50 meters due to the presence of a particular substance. Because of this, the efficiency of the sonar and other sensors was affected. In such a situation, after changing the strategy, the search was started with the help of special sonar equipment imported from Kochi by fixing an area of 60X60 meters.
Wreckage of helicopter recovered from the lake.
The pilot’s body was found on August 15
On the 12th day, 15 August, after the helicopter crash, the body of the pilot Lt Col Abhit Singh Bath was recovered from the dam. The co-pilot Jayant Joshi could not be traced. Lt Col Bath’s body was found in Ranjit Sagar Dam at a depth of 75.9 meters.
On 9 September 2021, the army teams also found the remaining part of the helicopter but the whereabouts of Captain Jayant Joshi could not be found. On Sunday, after two and a half months, the rescue team found the body of Jayant Joshi in the lake.
Co-pilot Jayant Joshi. file photo
Jayant Joshi’s brother expressed displeasure
Earlier on August 9, Jayant Joshi’s brother Neil Joshi also accused the search operation of being slow. He had said that it has been almost a week since the helicopter crashed and there was no trace of his brother. He said that the work of finding the pilots is going on at a very slow pace.
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