Helicopter crash in northern India kills 7 on Hindu pilgrimage route

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(Reuters) -All seven people on a helicopter in northern India were killed early on Sunday when it crashed while ferrying passengers on a popular Hindu pilgrimage route in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, officials said.

The helicopter was headed to Guptkashi from the shrine of Kedarnath, said the state’s director-general of information, Bansidhar Tripathi.

The Uttarakhand government ordered helicopter services to Kedarnath Valley suspended until Monday due to bad weather, Tripathi said. There have been three emergency landings and two helicopter crashes on the same route in the past month and a half, he said.

“Very sad news has been received about a helicopter crash in Rudraprayag district,” the state’s chief minister, Pushkar Singh Dhami, posted on X, adding that the State Disaster Response Force, local administration and other rescue teams were engaged in relief and rescue operations.

Dhami said in a statement he has ordered an inquiry into the cause of the crash.

The authorities will also examine helicopter pilots and operators, and “only those pilots who have long experience of flying helicopters in high Himalayan regions will be allowed,” he said.

Helicopter service for the pilgrimage will be resumed only after a meeting with all helicopter operators, Dhami said.

The Bell 407 helicopter, operated by Aryan Aviation, took off at 5:19 a.m. (2349 GMT on Saturday), India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation said in a statement.

Calls to Aryan Aviation seeking comment went unanswered.

Hundreds of thousands of people visit Uttarakhand’s Himalayan mountains every year, drawn by the belief that deities such as Lord Shiva and Lord Vishnu reside here.

Kedarnath is a part of the Char Dham Yatra pilgrimage route of four temple towns, which also include Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri.

India has reduced the frequency of helicopter operations to Char Dham and is enhancing surveillance and reviewing operations for any further action, the aviation ministry said.

(Reporting by Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow and Rishabh Jaiswal in Bengaluru; Writing by Nidhi Verma; Editing by William Mallard)