3 dead after chopper carrying 7, including ONGC employees, crashes off Mumbai coast
A helicopter carrying seven people, including five ONGC employees, crashed off Mumbai’s coast on Saturday. Three bodies have been recovered, Coast Guard said.
The Pawan Hans chopper went missing after it took off from Juhu airport at 10:20am in Mumbai. The helicopter lost contact with air traffic control (ATC) 15 minutes later 30 nautical miles offshore.
Sources said the helicopter — a Dauphin N3, bearing registration number VT-PWA — was on a normal sortie and was supposed to reach the oil rig at Bombay High at 11 am.
R Saravanan, PN Sreenivasan, Jose Anthony, Pankaj Garg, VK Bindu Lal Babu were the oil firm’s employees on board while Captain Ohatkar and Captain Katoch were the pilots on board.
The navy said it had deployed its stealth frigate INS Teg for the search operation while surveillance aircraft P8i is also being press into service.
“A Dornier aircraft and helicopters from Daman (near Dahanu) have also been launched,” a Coast Guard spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that “some debris has been located”, but did not say if it belonged to the chopper.
Union petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan tweeted: “Spoke to Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and requested for help from Coast Guard and other agencies in the search and rescue operations; CMD ONGC has rushed to Mumbai.”
In 2003, dozens were feared dead when an ONGC helicopter crashed into the sea on its way to an offshore exploration site.