Bipin Rawat, India’s chief of defence staff, is killed in a helicopter crash
He had been tasked with reforming the country’s archaic armed forces
IT WAS A short daytime flight, ferrying a grandee from an airbase to a nearby defence college. But the Mi-17 V5 carrying General Bipin Rawat, India’s chief of defence staff, and 12 others including his wife, did not make it. The Russian-built helicopter slammed into a wooded slope just a few minutes short of the Defence Services Staff College at Wellington in the Nilgiri Hills, a tea-growing region in southern India. The general himself had studied at the all-services officer training institute, and was due to give a lecture that afternoon. Only one passenger, a decorated fighter pilot, appears to have survived the crash.
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Tragedy in the Nilgiris”
Asia December 11th 2021
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