The Indian Air Force (IAF) on Thursday recovered the bodies of all the 13 occupants of its AN-32 aircraft that had crashed near Lipo in Arunachal Pradesh on June 3. It has also retrieved the black box of the transport plane.
Helicopters would be used to ferry the bodies from the crash site, an ANI alert said.
Earlier in the day, the IAF had confirmed that there were no survivors from the AN-32 aircraft and informed the families of the deceased personnel.
An eight-member rescue team reached the AN-32 crash site today morning and found no survivors.
The IAF also identified the air warriors who died in the crash.
The wreckage of the Antonov AN-32 aircraft was spotted on Tuesday — eight days after the crash — 16 km north of Lipo, North East of Tato at an approximate elevation of 12000 ft by Mi-17 Helicopter undertaking search operations.
The IAF aircraft went missing on June 3 with 13 officers on board after taking off from Assam’s Jorhat airbase for Menchuka Advance Landing Ground in Arunachal Pradesh.
The aircraft had last contacted ground sources at 1 pm on June 3 after taking off from Assam airbase at 12:25 pm.
Fighter aircraft, helicopters, aircraft carrying specialised sensors, satellites and all possible civil, police and local administrative agencies were pressed into service to locate the missing plane.
In July 2016, an Indian Air Force An-32 aircraft went missing over the Bay of Bengal with 29 people on board while on its way to Port Blair from Tambaram Air Force Station in Chennai.
Despite a massive search operation – India’s largest search operation for a missing plane over the sea – involving the ships and aircraft of Indian Navy and the IAF and scanning of 2,17,800 square nautical miles of Bay and Bengal, the aircraft could not be found.
After months of search, the rescue operation was called off. The government informed the then Lok Sabha that there were no survivors on board the aircraft.