RAIPUR: The Bell-430 helicopter, which went missing after taking off from Hyderabad with four crew on board, remained untraced for the eleventh day on Thursday.
"We still have no information about the missing helicopter or its two pilots and two technical staff," Chief Pilot of Chhattisgarh Government Squadron Leader Dibya Shankar Mishra said.
Parties from both Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh sides have been conducting aerial and ground searches but they have not achieved any success in tracing either the helicopter or its crew members, a senior official said.
"Troopers from state police and CRPF are searching the jungles to trace the missing copter and soon we would have information about it," Additional Director General of Police Giridhari Nayak said.
Chief Pilot V P Singh, co-pilot R Gaur, flight engineer Santosh Kumar and technician Ashwini Kumar were on board the chopper, which took off from Hyderabad at 3 pm on August 3 and contacts with the copter were lost at about 4 pm.
The helicopter was supposed to land at regional headquarters of Bastar at Jagdalpur in Chhattisgarh at 4.30 pm for refuelling, which never happened, and whereabouts of it had not been known to either Andhra Pradesh or Chhattisgarh
authorities since then.
Chhattisgarh government had hired the helicopter from Ranbaxy-owned Ran Air to take its Home Minister Ram Vichar Netam to Ranchi from Raipur.
