The Crime Investigation Department of the Andhra Pradesh police has launched its own probe into the death of Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and four others, who were killed when the Bell-430 helicopter they were travelling in crashed at Nallamalla forest in Kurnool district on Thursday.
The CID probe, which is being headed by Additional Director General A Sivanarayana, will also probe the possibility of a conspiracy behind the crash.
A four member committee of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation has already started a probe into the crash. A case of suspicious death has been booked by the police at Atmakur police station, which is nearest to the crash site atop the hillock number 339 near Rudurakodur, in Kurnool.
Sivanarayana, who has rushed to Kurnool, held discussions with senior district police officials and also constituted a special team headed by Additional Superintendent of Police N Balaji Rao.
The police team, along with the members of the DGCA probe team, has already visited the accident site and recovered the flight voice recorder of the helicopter, which is believed to have crashed after veering off the flight path and hitting the cliff of the hillock.
Investigating the real reason behind the crash would be challenging for both the DGCA and the state CID, as all the five occupants of the helicopter died in the crash and the helicopter was also badly damaged. .
The CID will try to find out the answers to a host of questions ranging from why an old helicopter with a history of snags was chosen for the chief minister when a new one was available, if there was neglect on the part of the Air Traffic Controllers in Hyderabad and Chennai and if the helicopter was subjected to all the customary checks before it was given a go ahead for the flight.
The CID will also probe why the ATC granted permission to the helicopter to fly from Hyderabad to Chittoor in spite of the fact that it would have to face inclement weather and heavy rainfall at Nallamalla forest in Kurnool en route.
The CID will question ATC staffers in Hyderabad and Chennai on why they failed to notice the crucial fact that the helicopter had deviated 18 kms east from its regular flight path.
The Hyderabad ATC has claimed that it had handed over the control of the helicopter to the Chennai ATC when the chopper went missing, but it is not clear whether the Chennai ATC was monitoring the movement of the chopper.
Meanwhile, the four member DGCA team including Captain Irshad Ahmad, Sanjay Brahmani, S Balaji Rao and Mahinderjit Singh, has held discussions with the Kurnool district authorities and put in place a coordination mechanism to facilitate the probe. The team has gathered crucial documents from the district administration including the post-mortem reports of all the five victims.
According to sources, the post mortem has revealed that one of the victims had died of a heart attack before the helicopter crashed, though his name has not been revealed.
As part of the DGCA probe, an aircraft will be flown from Begumpet airport in Hyderabad to the crash site on the same flight path to get an idea of what might have gone wrong and how much time the ill-fated helicopter was air-borne before it met with the accident.
The DGCA will also probe why the Emergency Locator Transmitter, which was supposed to get activated after the crash and send signals about the location of the chopper, failed to work
The state government's response, after the helicopter went missing at approximately 9.35 am on Wednesday, has also come under the scanner as it was found to be too lax and slow.
Venting her anger over this laxity, the late CM's wife Vijayalakshmi has already complained to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi. "It took them 24 hours to find my husband's body. What kind of official machinery is this," she reportedly said when Sonia and other senior Congress leaders met her in Hyderabad on Friday.
The efforts to locate the missing plane picked up pace only at around 1 pm, after YSR's childhood friend and political advisor Dr KVP Ramachandra Rao came to the secretariat, took matters in his hands and alerted the Centre.
