Uttarakhand helicopter crash: all six on board killed near Joshimath after Badrinath take-off

Soldiers at an Army signal centre saw smoke rising from the helicopter and saw it lose height quickly near Hathi Parvat, one report says. The aircraft came down on a hillside near Chai village, close to the JP Power House and the Marwari Bridge. At about 2:21 pm local authorities received word of a suspected crash above Chai village, and a search and rescue operation began.

The victims

All six people on board died. The pilot was Captain Himanshu. The five passengers were named in the reports as Prathapa, Arun, Shankar Gowda, Sudheer K and H.S. Natraja. One report says that Arun was a police inspector with the Bengaluru Police Crime Branch. All five were from Bengaluru, according to aviation authorities.

Chamoli Superintendent of Police Surjit Singh Panwar confirmed that all six had died. Reports published a little earlier in the evening said that the bodies had been located but not yet recovered, and later reports said that they had been recovered from the site.

Teams from the Chamoli district administration, the police, the State Disaster Response Force, the Army and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police were sent to the site. The wreckage lay in steep mountain terrain, and bad weather made the work harder. Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said that he was personally monitoring the situation and directed officials to carry out rescue and relief work. One report says that he also ordered any critically injured people to be airlifted to advanced medical facilities, though no survivors were found.

The crash happened as conditions worsened in the higher reaches of the state. The India Meteorological Department had issued an orange alert for Chamoli for Friday, warning of thunderstorms, lightning, hail and gusty winds of 40 to 50 kmph in isolated places. Light to moderate rain was forecast across the district, and rain and snowfall were likely along the Badrinath–Joshimath route. Reports describe rain, snow and poor visibility across several mountain areas.

Investigators have not said whether the weather, a technical fault or something else led to the crash. The reports found do not say when an investigation by the aviation accident investigation agency will begin, and none mentions any compensation for the families.

After the crash, the state's civil aviation authority grounded the entire fleet of Trans Bharat Aviation as a precaution. The authority said that the helicopter had lost communication over the Joshimath valley and that the tracking system had lost it, with its position at first unconfirmed.

The crash adds to a long list of aviation accidents in Uttarakhand's pilgrimage sector. One report cites an analysis by the aviation accident investigation agency that found nine occurrences, eight accidents and one serious incident, in the Char Dham sector from 2015 to 2025, with at least one accident or serious incident in every year from 2022 onward. The same report recalls the October 2022 crash near Garud Chatti on the Kedarnath route, in which all seven people on board were killed.

Helicopter services carry pilgrims and tourists between the shrines of the region and the plains, and Friday's flight was one such return trip from Badrinath.

The reports found do not give the type of helicopter or the number of flying hours of the pilot. They do not say whether the pilot sent a distress call before contact was lost. The state government has not announced an inquiry or a compensation amount in the reports found. Until the aviation accident investigation agency publishes its findings, the cause will remain uncertain, and any claims about it are speculation.