After nine days of massive hunt for a missing AN-32 transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF), the search and rescue team finally managed to spot the wreckage on Tuesday moring. The search ops were badly affected due to inclement weather in the thickly forested area. The Navy's long range reconnaissance aircraft P-8I, Mi17 helicopters, C-130 aircraft and advanced light helicopters, in addition to ground teams from the Army and ITBP, were deployed.
"The AN-32 went missing on June 3, 2019, after taking off from Jorhat in Assam. The wreckage of the aircraft was spotted today 16kms north of Lipo and northeast of Tato at an approximate elevation of 12,000ft," the IAF said in a statement. It added that "efforts are now underway to establish the status of occupants and survivors".
Six officers identified as Wing Cdr G.M. Charles, Squad Leader H. Vinod, Flight Lts Mohit Garg, Sumit Mohanty, Ashish Tanwar and Rajesh Thapa, and seven others identified as Anoop, Sharin, K.K. Mishra, Pankaj Sangwan, S.K. Singh, Rajesh Kumar and Putali, were on board.
Incidentally, the ill-fated AN-32 was not upgraded with modern avionics, said an official. "But, the delay in the search and rescue operation was due to hostile weather conditions. We had a very small window to do sorties," a defence source said.
The IAF even announced a cash reward of Rs 5 lakh for information on the missing AN-32. After the incident, serious concerns have been raised about the serviceability of the vintage aircraft. The IAF has a fleet of over 100 AN-32s which were inducted in 1984. But, nearly a dozen have been lost in crashes. After a 2009 crash, India signed up for a major upgrade and life extension programme with its entire fleet of AN-32s for $400 million. But, till today, only half of the fleet have been upgraded due to unavailability of spares. As per the project, 40 were to be upgraded in Ukraine and the rest at IAF's Kanpur-based repair depot. But, bitter relations between Moscow and Kiev halted the upgrade programme for many years. However, officials are claiming the spares issues have been resolved.
