hour-long agonizing wait and suspense hanging over the fate of the Chief Minister of India's southern state Andhra Pradesh, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, ended on a tragic note as the search teams of Indian Air Force found his body and those of four others atop a hillock in Nallamalla forest in Kurnool district. The Bell-430 helicopter, which had gone missing over Kurnool district Wednesday with the Chief Minister and four others on board, was found with bits and pieces strewn all over the cliff of the hillock at Rudra Koduru, 90 km away from Kurnool town. The commandos who were dropped from a helicopter on the inaccessible hillock recovered the badly charred bodies from the wreckage. State finance minister K. Rosaiah, Chief Secretary Ramakant Reddy and the director general of police SSP Yadav said the helicopter had crashed after hitting the cliff of the hillock and exploded into a fireball, killing all the five occupants. The other victims of the air crash include chief minister's principal secretary P Subhramanyam, Chief Security Officer John Wesley, and two pilots Group Captain SK Bhatia and Captain MS Reddy. Pointing out that inclement weather conditions prevailed over Nallamalla forest when the helicopter was flying from Hyderabad to Chittoor, Ramakant Reddy said, “to avoid certain cloud formations, the pilots appeared to have taken a detour and in the process deviated sufficiently from the flight path and it would appear on the preliminary examination that the chopper went and hit the cliff of a hillock crashed into it and perhaps exploded.” Air Commodore Sagar Bharti from Yellahanka air base near Bangalore, who was heading the aerial search operations, told the reporters at Kurnool that one of the helicopters spotted the missing helicopter atop the hillock but the weather conditions were so hostile that no helicopter could land near the site of the crash.
