Six feared dead as Badrinath-Dehradun helicopter crashes near Joshimath in Uttarakhand
A Trans Bharat Aviation helicopter flying from Badrinath to Dehradun crashed near Chai village in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district on Friday, with all six people on board feared dead as rescue teams reached the hillside site in poor weather.
Six people are feared dead after a helicopter flying from the pilgrimage town of Badrinath to Dehradun crashed in the hills near Joshimath in the Indian Himalayan state of Uttarakhand on Friday, 30 October, with rescue teams rushing to a remote hillside site in difficult weather.
The helicopter, operated by Trans Bharat Aviation and bearing the call sign VT-HCX, took off from Badrinath at about 1:14 pm for Sahastradhara in Dehradun, according to the Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority (UCADA). It lost communication while passing through the Joshimath valley, and its wreckage was later found on a hillside near Chai village, close to the JP Power House, in Chamoli district.
There were six people on board: the pilot and five passengers. Reports identified the pilot as Captain Himanshu Sabarwal and the passengers as Prathapa, Arun, Shankar Gowda, Sudheer K and HS Natraja. UCADA chief executive Prateek Jain said the five passengers were from Bengaluru, although he added that details were still being verified.
All six are feared dead, but the official position remained carefully worded in the first hours. Reuters, citing television reports, said six people were feared dead, and the Times of India reported the same, noting that deaths had not been officially confirmed. The Indian Express, citing district administration sources, reported that all six had been confirmed dead — a difference that underlines why families and readers should treat the casualty position as still being clarified by the authorities on the ground.
The rescue response was immediate and multi-agency. Police, the State Disaster Response Force, the Army and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police were dispatched to the site, and Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said his office had received information about the crash near Chai village and that a joint rescue operation was under way. Television reports said fire and smoke were visible at the crash site as teams reached the area.
Weather is a central part of the early reporting, though not yet an established cause. Reuters said bad weather was suspected to be the cause, and the Times of India reported rain and snowfall in several parts of the state. The India Meteorological Department had issued an orange alert for Chamoli on 30 October, warning of thunderstorms accompanied by lightning, hail and gusty winds of 40 to 50 kilometres per hour in isolated areas.
The crash has renewed attention on helicopter safety in the Char Dham pilgrimage sector, where aircraft fly pilgrims through narrow, high-altitude valleys in rapidly changing weather. An analysis by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, cited by the Times of India, showed nine occurrences, including eight accidents and one serious incident, in the Char Dham sector between 2015 and 2025, with at least one accident or serious incident every year from 2022 onwards.
Last year alone was particularly deadly. The Times of India reported that Uttarakhand recorded five helicopter accidents in 39 days in 2025, including a crash in Uttarkashi on 8 May that killed six people and a crash near Gaurikund on 15 June that killed all seven people on board. Each of those accidents prompted fresh questions about operating limits, weather checks and oversight, and Friday's crash is likely to revive them.
For the families of those on board, the immediate hours are about recovery and identification rather than analysis. The district administration said information about the crash above Chai village reached Joshimath police at about 2:21 pm, and search teams worked in the hills through the afternoon as the weather remained unsettled.
What happens next will follow a familiar but important sequence: the rescue and recovery operation must be completed, the authorities will need to give a single confirmed account of the casualties, and an investigation will need to establish what happened in the minutes after the aircraft entered the Joshimath valley. Until then, the cause remains unconfirmed, and the suspected role of the weather is a possibility reported by the media, not yet a finding.
