NEW DELHI: India’s top general, Bipin Rawat, was cremated in New Delhi on Friday with full military honours, including a 17-gun salute, two days after he and 12 others died in a helicopter crash in southern India.
Only one person survived the accident. The Indian Air Force has commissioned an inquiry into the incident.
Hundreds of soldiers escorted the carriage bearing the 63-year-old general’s body on its final journey through India’s capital. A dozen senior military officers had earlier kept a vigil while his body lay in state at his home.
Onlookers showered flowers on his coffin during the procession, and dozens holding the Indian flag ran alongside the carriage.
The bodies of Rawat, his wife and 11 defence personnel who also died in the crash were brought to New Delhi late on Thursday, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others laid wreathes before the flag-draped coffins.
“India will never forget their rich contribution,” Modi said.
The crash:
Thirteen out of 14 people, including Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, were killed when an Indian Air Force (IAF) helicopter crashed in Tamil Nadu’s Coonoor on Wednesday.
The 63-year-old was travelling with his wife and other senior officers in the Russian-made Mi-17 chopper, which crashed near its destination in southern Tamil Nadu state.
Footage from the scene showed a crowd of people trying to extinguish the fiery wreck with water buckets while a group of soldiers carried one of the passengers away on an improvised stretcher.
Rawat was headed to the Defence Services Staff College (DSSC) to address students and faculty from the nearby Sulur air force base in Coimbatore.
The chopper was already making its descent at the time of the crash.
It came down around 10 kilometres (six miles) from the nearest main road, forcing emergency workers to trek to the accident site, a fire official told AFP.
