Northern Army chief hurt as chopper forcelands near LoC

14:42 October 24

Northern Army chief hurt as chopper forcelands near LoC

Jammu: For Northern Army Commander Lt General Ranbir Singh and eight others, it was an escape nothing short of a miracle. It was not just an Advanced Light Helicopter that malfunctioned midair. It fell on high tension wires that luckily did not have running current.

The site of the accident is in Mandi in Jammu’s Poonch—just 3 km aerial distance away from the Line of Control with Pakistan while the road distance would be about 7 km. The chopper carrying Lt General Singh and eight others made the hard landing at Mandi in Poonch sector at about 1:50 PM on Thursday making for a miraculous escape.

“The chopper developed a technical snag upon detection of which the pilot looked for a place to land. On spotting a road, the chopper whizzed down and got entangled on high tension electric wires which luckily did not have running current. Entangled, the chopper then rolled down some 100 feet. Truly, it was a miraculous escape,” an informed source told ETV Bharat.

According to sources, Lt Gen Singh suffered injuries as did the other military officials.

Besides a pilot and a co-pilot, the chopper carried seven passengers who were on a regular sortie to the forward area.

It was during his time as the Director General of Military Operations that Indian Army commandos conducted surgical strikes against Northeastern militants near the Indo-Myanmar border across Nagaland and Manipur and also the September 28-29, 2016 counter-terror precision strikes across the LoC that was in retaliation against the Pakistan attack on the Uri army camp on September 18, 2016.

Along with the Army Vice-Chief and four others, Lt Gen Singh would be one of the contenders for the Army chief’s post after General Bipin Rawat’s retirement in a few months.