How an SMS helped track YSR's chopper wreckage

An SMS received by the mobile phone of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S R Reddy's security officer John Wesley after the VVIP helicopter crashed is what provided the most crucial clue to trace the accident site, government officials said in New Delhi on Thursday.

"The most innovative means to locate the accident site of the Bell-430 helicopter was adopted on Thursday morning by tracking the signal from a mobile phone of one of the passengers on board the helicopter. The mobile phone had received an SMS at 1206 hours on Wednesday, about two-and-half hours after the helicopter had gone missing from the radar," they said.

Though they refused to divulge details of the service provider or the contents of the SMS, the officials said with the help of the last signal from the mobile phone the crisis committee set up in Hyderabad decided to concentrate their search for Reddy's helicopter within a four-km radius from the spot where the mobile phone signal was tracked.

On the suggestion of the Indian Air Force representative in the crisis committee, two Chetak helicopters from Hakimpet Helicopter Training School of the Air Force was launched on Thursday morning at 6.30 hours and after a two-hour search they found the wreckage around 0830 hours.