Jun 15: All seven people on a helicopter in northern India were killed early on Sunday when it crashed while ferrying passengers on a popular Hindu pilgrimage route in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, officials said.
The helicopter was headed to Guptkashi from the shrine of Kedarnath, said the state's director-general of information, Bansidhar Tripathi.
The Uttarakhand government ordered helicopter services to Kedarnath Valley suspended until Monday due to bad weather, Tripathi said. There have been three emergency landings and two helicopter crashes on the same route in the past month and a half, he said.
"Very sad news has been received about a helicopter crash in Rudraprayag district," the state's chief minister, Pushkar Singh Dhami, posted on X, adding that the State Disaster Response Force, local administration and other rescue teams were engaged in relief and rescue operations. "REUTERS
