Gen. Bipin Rawat, India’s top ranking military officer, died in a helicopter crash on Wednesday along with his wife and 11 others, said Indian officials.
His death was confirmed in a statement by the defense minister, after some hours of uncertainty, as senior Govt officials reached to the crash site in the Tamil Nadu and the victims were taken to a local hospital.
The loss of General Rawat, who as the chief of defense staff coordinated the various wings of India’s armed forces, comes at a particularly strained moment as India’s military finds itself stretched by threats on two of its borders as well as the impact of a slowing economy.
In addition to the constant war-footing with India’s arch enemy, Pakistan, tens of thousands of reinforcement troops remain in high altitudes in the Himalayas for a second winter after deadly skirmishes with Chinese forces last year.
The IAF officials, in a statement, said General P. Rawat had been on his way to the Defense Services Staff College in Wellington, Tamil Nadu, to address the faculty and under tanning students when his MI-17 went down to hill station in the state, around 3:45pm local time. There was only one survivor among the nine passengers and four crew members.
The Air Force also announced that an high level inquiry was underway, and that the country’s air chief had flown to the crash site. Experts said nothing about the incident raised immediate red flags the flight path, just about 50 miles, was a routine one for the Mi-17 V5 helicopter that General Rawat was traveling in.
According to local villager Deepak Manubial in Coonoor, said in a phone call. “villagers around the site heard a heavy blast, and then blast and smoke emanated from the site of crash. All I could see was smoke and the tail of the aircraft, which was the only visible part.
General P. Rawat was born to a military family in the northern state of Uttarakhand. His career included leadership roles in the country’s restive northeast, which has a long history of Maoist insurgency, as well as United Nations peacekeeping missions abroad. He rose to the position of army chief in 2016, and was elevated to the newly created post of chief of the defense staff in 2019.
