Search operations

India’s biggest-ever air, land and satellite search operations to locate the Chief Minister, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, and others who went missing along with their helicopter in the dense Nallamala forests.

The helicopter was over the dense Nallamala jungles near the Srisailam dam, about 60 nautical miles from Hyderabad. It was carrying fuel for three hours.

Effort of Searching:

1. The unprecedented effort included ultra-sophisticated remote sensing aircraft of Isro
2. The IAF
3. Private owned & Army helicopters
4. Army personnel, 5,000 CRPF men and Andhra and Karnataka police forces.
5. The elite anti-naxal Greyhound force, the anti-naxal central COBRA force
6. The IAF later launched a Sukhoi Su-31MKI fighter aircraft equipped with the advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to track down the helicopter.
7. The Indian Army launched about 300 hundred of its troops including two columns of specialised Ghatak forces
8. The Army troops were equipped with hand-held thermal imagers and night-vision goggles
9. The Indian Space Research Organisation flew two specially-equipped B-200 Beachcraft over the Nallamalla forests.
10. The aircraft got 41 images, each covering 8 sq km.to the National Remote Sensing Agency, Of the 41 images, 21 were of no use, and no data could be picked up from the others.
11. A thermal imaging aircraft that can pick out metal on the ground. This aircraft can be refuelled mid-air, meaning that it could operate for a long stretch of time.
12. An additional Sukhoi fighter aircraft had been kept in readiness at Mumbai.
13. The IAF despatched a Dornier and Avro aircraft to search for the missing chopper.