Photo: Sumodm / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
None of the six people on board survived the helicopter crash near Joshimath in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district on Friday (October 30), officials have confirmed. Chamoli District Magistrate Gaurav Kumar said the pilot and all five passengers died on the spot, and police later said the bodies had been recovered from the crash site, a steep and hard-to-reach slope in the Hathi Parvat area.
Wreckage found on a fog-bound hillside
The Trans Bharat Aviation helicopter, call sign VT-HCX, had left the Badrinath helipad shortly after 1 pm for the Sahastradhara heliport in Dehradun. According to Chamoli police, its radar link was lost within a couple of minutes, and soldiers at a nearby Army post saw it heading into the valley above Pandukeshwar. Army personnel reported seeing smoke and the aircraft coming down fast.
Search teams from the police, the State Disaster Response Force, the Army and the ITBP set out from Pandukeshwar and Joshimath, backed by a drone from Gopeshwar, while rain and low cloud kept rescue helicopters grounded. Officers of the Army’s 9th Independent Mountain Brigade said their team reached the wreckage at around 3.30 pm and found that everyone on board had been killed. The helicopter came down on a hillside near Chai village, close to the Marwari bridge, state disaster officials said. The superintendent of police’s office said teams were working to carry the bodies down to the nearest motorable road.
The victims
Officials identified the pilot as Captain Himanshu Sabharwal, 48, a resident of Delhi. The five passengers, all from Karnataka, were named as Pratapa, 41, Arun Salunke, 44, V.B. Shankar Gowda, 39, Sudhir K., 50, and H.S. Nataraja, 51.
Mr. Salunke was an inspector with the Bengaluru Central Crime Branch and had travelled to Uttarakhand on a trip with friends, according to police sources in Bengaluru. Pratap Gowda, a contractor from Bachihalli in Sakaleshpur taluk who had lived in Bengaluru for several years, is survived by his wife and two children. Friends said he had recently joined the Congress and hoped to contest the coming zilla panchayat elections. Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister G. Parameshwara said he had spoken to the Chamoli police chief as soon as he learnt that people from the State were on board.
Probe ordered, operator’s fleet grounded
Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami expressed grief over the deaths and directed officials to carry out a detailed investigation that examines every aspect of the accident. He also asked the district administration to give the families all possible help. The Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority had already grounded Trans Bharat Aviation’s entire fleet as a precaution after the helicopter went missing.
The flight took off in poor weather, with heavy rain and dense cloud over the area, and the conditions are likely to be a central question for investigators.
A pattern of hill-route accidents
Helicopters carry large numbers of pilgrims to Badrinath, Kedarnath and the other Char Dham shrines, but the mountain routes have a long record of accidents. Six people were killed when a helicopter heading to Gangotri crashed in Uttarkashi district’s Gangnani area in May 2025, and seven died when a pilgrim helicopter went down near Kedarnath in October 2022. Friday’s crash is expected to renew questions about flying in bad weather and the oversight of private charter operators in the State. Officials said more details would follow once the bodies are brought down and the formal inquiry begins.
