Two IAF pilots killed in chopper crash at Siachen

Two IAF pilots were killed when their Cheetah helicopter crashed today on the Siachen Glacier close to the Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL) between India and Pakistan.

The pilots, identified as Squadron Leader S Basu and Flight Lieutenant A Sharma, had taken off from the Siachen base camp for a "routine flying mission", when the chopper crashed near the Amar Post in the Central Siachen Glacier, a defence ministry spokesperson said here.

Both the pilots suffered fatal injuries, the spokesperson said, adding that a Court of Inquiry had been ordered to investigate and ascertain the cause of the crash.

Pakistan armed forces were the first to spot the bodies of the two pilots whose Cheetah helicopter had crashed in the middle of the Siachen glacier early morning.

Due to heavy snowfall, the IAF rescue team was unable to go deep in the northern glacier at 15,000 feet where the Cheetah was believed to have crashed while on a routine sortie. Sources said it were the Pakistani choppers which had spotted the bodies of Sqd Ldr S Basu and Fl Lt A Sharma somewhere near the borderline dividing Indian and Pakistani holds on the world's coldest and the highest battlefield.

The spokesman said that "the government has deeply appreciated the cooperation extended by the Pakistani authorities in aerial and ground-based rescue operations in locating bodies of the two pilots."

Meanwhile, in the backdrop of the talks on demilitarisation of Siachen glacier not making any headway, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said that negotiations of this kind were "complicated". "These are complicated negotiations," Singh told reporters on the sidelines of Defence Investiture ceremony at the Rashtrapati Bhavan here.