Hyderabad, February 12: Inclement weather resulted in the crash of the chopper in which former chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and four others were killed in the first week of September, a two-member expert committee which probed the incident said in its report submitted to Andhra Chief Minister K Rosaiah on Thursday. The committee also ruled out any sabotage and blamed bad weather alone stating that all available evidence point to this .
The committee comprising retired IPS officer M R Reddy and former director general of civil aviation H S Koola was constituted to investigate and make recommendations to prevent such accidents in future. Reddy said the cockpit voice recorder of the Bell 430 helicopter was decoded by the manufacturer in Canada but it did not show any conversation between the Chief Minister and the two pilots before the crash.
“During our investigation all the evidence that has been put on record indicates that the chopper was caught in bad weather. Records and evidence show that the pilots were struggling to keep the chopper in air and trying to gain height after it got caught in a very strong downdraft over the hills and started losing height quickly. While trying to regain control, the chopper hit a tree and crashed,” M R Reddy said. He said that both pilots, S K Bhatia and M S Reddy, were given full briefing by the meteorological department about the weather conditions and the ATC had also allowed the chopper to take off. The committee found that both the engines of the chopper were working at the time of the crash.
——-Agencies