DEHRADUN (The Thursday Times) — A helicopter carrying five pilgrims and a pilot back from the Hindu shrine of Badrinath crashed into a hillside near Joshimath in India’s Uttarakhand state on Friday afternoon amid heavy rain and poor visibility, officials said.
The aircraft, operated by private company Trans Bharat Aviation, came down at about 2.20pm near Chai village in Chamoli district, close to the JP Power House, as it flew back towards Dehradun. All five passengers were from Bengaluru, according to the passenger manifest, said Prateek Jain, chief executive of the Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority.
Jain said the helicopter took off from Badrinath at 1.14pm and lost contact with the tracking system while crossing the Joshimath valley. There was no official word on casualties by Friday evening, as teams from the State Disaster Response Force, the district administration and the disaster management department made their way to the site.
Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said he was monitoring the operation and had ordered that anyone critically injured be airlifted to a higher medical centre. The India Meteorological Department had issued an orange alert for Chamoli warning of thunderstorms, hail and gusts of 40 to 50 kilometres per hour, with snow forecast along the Badrinath-Joshimath route.
Helicopter rides have become a popular way for pilgrims to reach the Char Dham shrines high in the Himalayas, but the services have faced scrutiny after a string of accidents. Seven people were killed when a helicopter carrying pilgrims from Kedarnath crashed in June 2025, and another seven died on the same route in October 2022.
