By IANS,
Hyderabad/New Delhi : Grief swept through India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh and much of the country Thursday at the tragic death of Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, a dynamic politician who was killed when his helicopter exploded in the dark rain clouds over a deep forest a day earlier.
The ruling Congress’ charismatic leader left home for Chittoor, 600 km away, for a mass contact programme in a remote village Wednesday morning and never returned. On Thursday, almost 24 hours later, the mutilated remains of his body and four others who were with him on the Bell helicopter were found on a hilltop in the dense Nallamalla forests in Kurnool, about 200 km from here.
In one of the biggest searches mounted in the country, helicopters, remote sensing unmanned aerial vehicles and even barefoot villagers hunted in pouring rain for a whole day and night in the forested hinterland for the wreckage, which was finally located about 40 nautical miles east of Kurnool town.
The helicopter had broken into several pieces and the bodies had been charred, a sombre Home Minister P. Chidambaram said in Delhi while making the official pronouncement of the death of the 60-year-old leader.
“I am officially confirming the tragic deaths,” Chidambaram stated.
An Indian Air Force (IAF) helicopter carrying YSR’s body arrived in Hyderabad in the evening. State ministers and senior leaders of the ruling Congress received the casket at the airport. It was taken to the chief minister’s camp office, where his family members and close relatives and friends were present.
The bodies of YSR’s Special Secretary P. Subrahmanyam, chief security officer A.S.C. Wesley and pilots – Group Captain S.K. Bhatia and Captain M.S. Reddy – are being sent to their respective home towns.
Earlier, the bodies were brought from the crash site in Nallamalla forests to Kurnool town, where an autopsy was conducted. Since the bodies were charred beyond recognition and were decomposed, the military personnel had a tough time in air lifting them from the crash site.
YSR’s body will be kept at the Lal Bahadur Stadium from 10 a.m. Friday for people to pay homage. It will be then taken to his native Pulivendula town in Kadapa district for state funeral.
There was shock, disbelief and tears in Andhra Pradesh as the late chief minister’s body reached Hyderabad in the evening and crowds milled around trying to come to terms with the enormity of the tragedy.
“He is my god. I can’t believe that he is no more,” said an inconsolable Congress worker.
Many towns and villages in the state virtually shut down in grief as the news spread.
The silence that fell over the state was punctuated by muffled sobs and wails of hundreds of people who rushed to the popular chief minister’s camp office, the state secretariat and the party headquarters.
In the rest of the country, viewers sat in front of their television sets watching the unfolding of the tragedy that had left the state and the ruling Congress in a political vacuum.
The news stunned the Congress that lost the leader who had helped strengthen its foothold in the vital south.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who called an emergency meeting in the national capital, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and several union ministers were expected to go to Hyderabad Friday ahead of the state funeral in his home town Pulivendula in Kadapa district.
Calling YSR an “ideal chief minister who was a role model for other states”, the prime minister said he had lost “a valued colleague on whom I depended for support and ideas.”
A deeply moved Sonia Gandhi said it “is a huge loss for the party, it is a loss for all of us, his colleagues, for the state of Andhra Pradesh and the country”.
Tributes poured in from all quarters, including from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that also lowered its flags in mourning.
The union cabinet met in Delhi and decided that there would be a state funeral and that the tricolour would fly at half mast in Delhi and all state capitals on Thursday and Friday.
Finance Minister K. Rosaiah has taken over as caretaker chief minister.
The government has set up a four-member panel, headed by the chief of Pawan Hans Helicopter Ltd, to probe the chopper crash. It will submit its report in two months. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation Thursday began a probe into the reasons behind the crash Thursday.
YSR, who will be given a state funeral, is survived by his wife Vijayalaxmi, MP son Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy and daughter Sharmila, who reached Hyderabad from Bangalore with her children in early Thursday and was in touch with officers coordinating the rescue operation.
A rescue that was never to be.