By IANS,
Raipur : A private chopper with four crew members on board has gone missing since Sunday afternoon shortly after it took off from Hyderabad for the Chhattisgarh capital, officials said here Monday.
“The Ran Air chopper was scheduled to land at Jagdalpur in Bastar district headquarters for refuelling Sunday en route to Raipur but it went missing after it took off from Hyderabad at about 2 p.m.,” A.N. Upadhyay, inspector general of police Bastar Range, told IANS on phone.
“There are four including pilot, co-pilot, engineer and a technician, on board,” Mishra said.
“The chopper should have taken about 90 minutes to reach Jagdalpur after taking off from Hyderabad,” he said.
Upadhyay said a search team had left from Jagdalpur town in another chopper Monday morning.
According to police officials, the chopper was booked by the Chhattisgarh government to take Home minister Ram Vichar Netam to Jharkhand state Monday for functions at Ranchi and Daltonganj.
The Chhattisgarh police has sought help of the Andhra Pradesh and Orissa police to step up search for the chopper in the forests of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh states bordering Chhattisgarh’s Maoist-infested Bastar region.
The officials believe that the chopper may have either made an emergency landing amid heavy rain or may have crashed.