A high-powered committee set up by the Civil Aviation ministry to probe the helicopter crash that killed Andhra Pradesh chief minister YSR Reddy and four others on September 2, today inspected the crash site at Nallamala forests in Kurnool district of the state.
A five-member team led by RK Tyagi, chairman and managing director of the Pawan Hans Corporation, which is probing the crash involving the Bell-430 helicopter, examined the crash area within a radius of 100 meters, official sources said.
The team members reached the crash site of the chopper on the hilly terrain and videographed the entire area and collected crucial pieces of the helicopter wreckage, Kurnool Superintendent of Police Ch Srikant said.
"The team members collected pieces from the crash site and made an inventory," Srikant said, adding that the experts closely observed the wreckage site.
The team will hold interaction with doctors and forensic experts who conducted autopsy on the charred remains of YSR, his principal secretary P Subrahmanyam, chief security officer ASC Wesley, pilots SK Bhatia and MS Reddy, he said.
The SP said the expert team is likely to visit Kurnool once again after a week.
Led by Tyagi, the team which arrived at Kurnool yesterday, held discussions with district authorities about the tragic incident and they were given the autopsy report, the sources said.
The district administration had on September 4 handed over pieces of the helicopter wreckage, flight operation manuals, cockpit voice recorder (CVR), video and photo clippings of the crash site, the FIR and the explosives examination report to a four-member Director-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) team.
The CVR is being examined and efforts were on to decode the data and retrieve other information in Delhi, which would be crucial in the investigations into the crash, officials said.
