Probe team visits YSR chopper crash site

'Vital clues' have been collected by the high-powered committee of Directorate General of Civil Aviation, from the helicopter crash site in the dense Nallamalla forest range in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh on Thursday, official sources said.

Former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and four others were killed when their helicopter crashed in Nallamalla forest area on September 2.

The five-member DGCA expert team led by R K Tyagi, chairman and managing director of the Pawan Hans Corporation, on Thursday carried out on-site investigations and examined the crash area within a radius of 100 meters between Rudrakonda and Pavuralagutta hills, they said.

"The team members videographed the entire area of the crash site from different angles and also took photographs before collecting crucial pieces of the helicopter wreckage," Kurnool District Superintendent of Police CH Srikant said.

The expert team examined the crash site for about five hours on the hilly terrain and is likely to visit Kurnool once again after a week, the SP said.

Meanwhile, according to unconfirmed reports, the chopper was flying at an altitude of over 3,000 feet above the sea-level when it lost contact with Air Traffic Controllers in Hyderabad, while possibly flying over the Nallamala forest area, where the height of the hillocks are said to be about 1,800 feet.

Bad weather conditions along the flight path and poor visibility might have forced the pilots to fly the helicopter low that resulted in hitting the tree top on the hillock, the reports said.

The wreckage of the ill-fated Bell 430 helicopter, in which Reddy and four others were killed, was spotted over Nallamalla hills, about 70 kms east of Kurnool, by Indian Air Force helicopters on September 3.

The helicopter had deviated 18 kms from its path, hit the cliff of a hillock and crashed on September 2 while on its way to Chittoor from Hyderabad. District authorities said the wreckage of the chopper would be cleared only after completion of the investigations, adding that the DGCA team would submit its report within two months to the Central government.

Top officials of the Andhra Pradesh Criminal Investigation Department, along with Kurnool District Collector M K Meena and Superintendent of Police Ch Srikant,  accompanied the DGCA team to the spot.

Meanwhile, the CBI, which has been handed over the investigations, is likely to take up the probe in a day or two, said CBI Deputy Inspector General V Lakshminarayana.