Somu killed in helicopter crash
Minister of State for Defence N V N Somu and three army officers were killed in a helicopter crash near Tawan in Arunachal Pradesh this morning.
The 60-year-old minister is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter,
both of whom are doctors.
The tragedy has prompted Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral to cancel his scheduled two-day visit to Bombay, where he was to commission INS Delhi.
However, the ship will be commissioned as scheduled on Saturday.
The crash took place north of Mago around 0920 hours when the minister was being flown to a forward area where he was to address the troops, an army spokesman said.
Five army choppers were immediately pressed into service to rescue
probable survivors, but they could locate the chopper wreckage at 1210 hours with all the occupants dead.
The others who died were Major General Ramesh Chandra Nagpal from Delhi and two army helicopter pilots.
Somu's body was taken to Tezpur for embalming. It will be taken tonight to Madras, where the cremation is scheduled for tomorrow.
The army and air force chiefs will attend the funeral, the spokesman said.
It was not immediately known what caused the Army
Aviation Corps helicopter to crash. Bad weather was cited as one likely cause for the disaster.
Major General Nagpal is survived by his wife and two sons,
one of whom is an army officer. The families of the two pilots are in Misamarhi in Arunachal Pradesh.
A lawyer by training, Natarajan Somasundaram was born on May 11, 1937. He later changed his name to N V N Somu, ''served'' a term in the Vellore central jail as an 18-month-old infant alongwith his mother who was imprisoned for taking part in the anti-Hindi agitation launched by rationalist leader Periyar E V Ramasamy in 1938.
He began his career as a reporter in the Tamil newspaper Dina Thanthi.
Joining the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham during his student days, Somu was a corporator in Madras in 1969 and deputy mayor in 1974. He was also an MLA from 1982-84.
Somu was a trade unionist and headed the DMK's legal wing for several years.
He was elected from the North Madras Lok Sabha constituency for a second term last year. He was inducted into the Union ministry by H D Deve Gowda.
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