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The helicopter which carried Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YSR Reddy has been spotted after it lost radar contact. It has been spotted in Rudrakonda hill in the dense Nallamalla forests at a distance of 40 nautical miles east of Kurnool town.
Union Home Secretary G K Pillai has disclosed from Delhi that the chopper may have crashed.
He has also disclosed that Air Force is trying to drop para commandos to check if there are any survivors.
But there are sources which claim that the chopper has been spotted in a mangled state.
Inspector General of Police Rajiv Trivedi, who is leading the ground search operations, has also confirmed that the missing chopper has been traced and he added that the team is heading to the location.
But ambiguity still prevails over the fate of the Chief Minister, his Principal Secretary Subramanyam, Chief Security Officer A S C Wesley and the Pilot and Co-Pilot Group Captain S K Bhatia and Capt M S Reddy.
The IAF had broke the news about finding the chopper while remaining tight lipped on the condition of those on board.
"We have located the helicopter. It is on top of a hill at a distance of 40 nautical miles east of Kurnool. We are trying to find out if there are survivors. We are not sure if it has crashed or not," Air Commodore Sagar Bharati of the Bangalore Air Command who is in-charge of the search operations told reporters in Kurnool.
The 11-year-old Bell 430 helicopter had lost radio contact one hour after it took off from the old Begumpet Airport in Hyderabad at 8. 35 am yesterday.
In Delhi, Home Minister P Chidambaram met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to update him with the latest information.
