GUWAHATI: Mortal remains of Wing Commander, Mandeep Singh Dhillon, the pilot of the IAF helicopter that had crashed in Arunachal Pradesh jungles on July 4 while on a landslide-hit evacuation mission, were cremated with full national honour at Tezpur in Assam on Saturday afternoon.
The six-year-son of the pilot performed the last rites in presence of his wife, daughter and his parents besides top IAF, Army officials of Tezpur base and Sonitpur district administration. Dhillon, considered among the best pilots in the country, hails from Patiala in Punjab.
The IAF’s Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) piloted by Dhillon had evacuated 169 people from Sagalee in Papum Pare district and Dambuk areas in Arunachal Pradesh before it went missing from the radar in that fateful afternoon of July 4. Dambuk in Lower Dibang Valley district is 350 km east of the state capital Itanagar.
The cremation of co-pilot PK Singh, who was also killed in the crash, will be done in Tezpur on Sunday. The body of IRBN jawan Nada Amring of Arunachal Pradesh, who was also on board the ill-fated chopper, had already been handed to his family. The body of the fourth victim of the crash, flight engineer Gujjair, is yet to be recovered by search teams.
A defence communique on Saturday said that Wing Commander Dhillon was the Commanding Officer of the 115 Helicopter Unit at Tezpur.
Dhillon had accomplished over 18 years of flying experience in varied terrain, from icy mountains of Ladakh to the jungles of the North East India. Wing Commander Dhillon belonged to Patiala and came from an Air Force family, with his father having retired as a Squadron Leader. He had completed his schooling from RIMC Dehradun and later joined the National Defence Academy (NDA) at Khadakwasla, Pune as an Air Force cadet.
Unpredictable weather often makes helicopter operations very risky in Arunachal Pradesh. It is further compounded by poor visibility in air and lack of suitable emergency landing spots on ground due to thick jungles. Even Search and Rescue (SAR) missions are fraught with uncertainty, as it happened in this case. After the SAR aircrafts were unable to spot the helicopter, a number of search patrols were launched by the Army and the paramilitary forces, with assistance of the Arunachal Pradesh police and local guides. One of these patrol found the wreckage of the helicopter in an inaccessible deep gorge at Sopo Yuha, following which extraction and retrieval of the mortal remains could be done on Friday.