Mortal Remains Of All 13 IAF Air Warriors On Board Ill Fated AN-32 Aircraft Recovered

Six bodies and the remains of seven other crew members aboard the ill-fated Indian Air Force’s An-32 transport aircraft that crashed in Arunachal Pradesh on 3 June have been recovered from the crash site, a spokesperson of the Indian Air Force (IAF) in Shillong said on Thursday (29 June).

The flight destination of An-32 which took off from Jorhat in Assam on 3 June, was an advanced landing ground at Mechuka in Arunachal Pradesh’s Shi Yomi district but lost contact after flying for 30 minutes.

It took over a week for the search team to locate the wreckage of the aircraft in the remote mountainous region of Arunachal Pradesh.The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was also pressed for searching the missing Indian Air Force An-32 aircraft Soviet-origin aircraft.

The crash site was a densely forested mountain slope at an approximate altitude of 12,000 feet and IAF Helicopters and planes covered hundreds of square miles of the mountainous region before rescue workers came upon the location of the wreckage.

Due to bad weather a mountaineering team 20 of men including 11 porters was dispatched to the crash site, who then trekked to the crash spot after being air dropped only after two failed attempts at a nearby location. According to an IAF spokesperson “The plan was initiated when the weather and clouds did not allow any helicopter flight”.