Uttarakhand has undoubtedly become accident prone. Not a day is passed when accidents don’t occur here and majority of these accidents are deadly, dreaded claiming several lives.
After the social media era coming into existence such accidents even at the minutest level comes to light within no seconds. According to the DGP Uttarakhand IPS Ashok Kumar while 200 murders take place in Uttarakhand every year according to a conservative estimate about 1000 people die in deadly road accidents.
Being a Himalayan state and land of abode of Gods, the traffic in Uttarakhand has tremendously increased with lakhs of people thronging at its four historic destinations every year.
This year after two years of Covid compulsions the Char Dham Yatra saw huge influx of pilgrims in Uttarakhand with about 42 lakh people thronging here breaking all records. There have been thousands of deaths due to natural disasters, deadly road accidents with vehicles big and small falling on gorges claiming several lives.
Natural calamities like boulder falls from hilly terrains, accidental deaths due to bad road conditions, high speed driving, driving in inebriation, landslide tragedies, human kills by man eaters and tragedies of 2013 June and thereafter at Rishi Ganga due to cloud bursts and several other such irreparable shocking tragedies Uttarakhand seems to have been cursed despite so much of significant presence of Lord Shiva and Lord Badrinath residing here for centuries.
The helicopter crash tragedy claiming seven lives of pilgrims including a pilot has further added to the dreaded woes of the pilgrims who continue to throng the Uttarakhand hills in large numbers.
Twelve flights on regular basis daily ferrying pilgrims to and fro have raised several questions about these chopper flights disturbing and damaging the environmental peace and ecology of the Himalayas.
Such helicopter accidents too have become very frequent in Uttarakhand with accident rate also enhancing.
What is worst is that the financial compensation in such deaths is selective and very meagre.
Just a few days ago in a cabinet committee meeting chaired by CM Pushkar Singh Dhami the compensation has been increased from Rs. One lakh to Rs two lakhs.
Sounds shocking that in Uttarakhand a precious life costs just Rs two lakhs unfortunately.
The chopper crash a kilometer or two away from Kedarnath at Garur Chatti while ferrying pilgrims happened due to bad weather, short visibility and inclement weather.
The visibility was near zero and common sense says as to what was the need to take such a huge risk.
The crash occured within minutes of the chopper taking off from Kedarnath with six passengers on board and a pilot from Maharashtra killing all of them instantly with their mutilated bodies scattered along with the chopper debris and burnt chopper in flames within the range of several metres.
Meanwhile while the president, prime minister, civil aviation minister n chief minister of Uttarakhand and hordes of political leaders doing their lip service had tweeted expressing their condolences – the NDRF and SDRF rescue teams were immediately pressed into service with all the badly mutilated dead bodies retrieved after intensive search.
The Director General of Civil Aviation has ordered an indepth probe into the crash to ascertain the real reason behind the sudden crash in the helicopter of the private Arya chopper company which was blacklisted earlier as well but then allowed to start its service of ferrying pilgrims to Kedarnath Badrinath etc again along with other chopper companies.
However, for the time being the chopper services in Uttarakhand Char Dham destinations have been stopped forthwith just to pacify enraged sentiments to start again shortly forgetting everything to witness another shocking tragedy. My tributes to the departed souls.
It may be recalled that Aryan Aviation was one of the five operators fined for flouting norms such as non adherence to regular maintenance schedule and fake logging as, per the statement of a civil aviation ministry official. The helicopter crashed was the Bell 407 chopper carrying pilgrims from Kedarnath to Guptkashi in Rudraprayag district of Garhwal, Uttarakhand on Tuesday.
The chopper burst into flames at 11.45 AM amidst fog n problem of complete non visibility. The deceased pilgrims. were from Gujarat and Tamilnadu and pilot Anil Singh from Maharashtra. In 2020 about twenty people had died and their bodies recovered when MI 17- V5 chopper claimed twenty lives including a flight Lt K Praveen after its crash around Gaurikund while on a rescue mission to rescue stranded people during monsoon floods.
Similarly during June 2013 Kedarnath deluge due to the cloud bursts several rescue team members including pilot died in a rescue mission from deluge hit Kedarnath site.
UK is accident prone region geographically. Actually Not much can be done . Learn to live carefully with it. What else ?