Wing Commander Mandeep Singh Dhillon : A tribute

Friends of the Wing Commander said that, he was one of the best helicopter pilot and now mourned after lost their best friend.

Kohima based Defence PRO Colonel Chiranjeet Konwer said that, India lost one of its best helicopter pilots.

Wing Commander Mandeep Singh Dhillon, along with the co-pilot Flight Lieutenant PK Singh, and another crew member from the Indian Air Force lost their lives in this tragic air crash, apart from one police person who was being ferried.

The helicopter was on a flood rescue mission in Arunachal Pradesh and had already made five sorties when it went down in the last and sixth sortie shortly after taking off at 3:50 pm from Pilputu helipad near Sagalee for the heliport at Naharlagun, about 13 kms from Itanagar.

It was being piloted by Wing Commander Mandeep Singh Dhillon, who was the Commanding Officer of the 115 Helicopter Unit at Tezpur.

The helicopter was evacuating people stranded due to massive landslides caused by heavy rainfall, and being led by the Commanding Officer himself.

In a tweet the next day, Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Pema Khandu said until it went missing the IAF chopper evacuated 169 people from Sagalee and Dambuk areas. Dambuk in Lower Dibang Valley district is 350 km east of the state capital Itanagar.

Unpredictable weather often makes helicopter operations very risky in Arunachal Pradesh. It is further compounded by poor visibility in air and lack of suitable emergency landing spots on ground due to thick jungles. Even Search and Rescue (SAR) missions are fraught with uncertainty, as it happened in this case.

After the SAR aircrafts were unable to spot the helicopter, a number of search patrols were launched by the Army and the paramilitary forces, with assistance of the Arunachal Pradesh police and local guides.

One of these patrol found the wreckage of the helicopter in an inaccessible deep gorge at Sopo Yuha, following which extraction and retrieval of the mortal remains took place on July 7.

On July 8, Wing Commander Mandeep Singh Dhillon was given a tearful farewell at Tezpur by the Indian Air Force, Army officials, family members and a number of his friends and course-mates.

"He had over 18 years of flying experience in varied terrain, from icy mountains of Ladakh to the jungles of the North East India. Wing Commander Dhillon belonged to Patiala and came from an Air Force family, with his father having retired as a Squadron Leader. He had completed his schooling from RIMC Dehradun, whose alumni are called Rimcollians, and later joined the National Defence Academy (NDA) at Khadakwasla, Pune as an Air Force cadet," Colonel Konwer said.

"Apart from being an excellent pilot and a flying instructor, Wing Commander Dhillon was an excellent cross-country runner who won almost every long distance race in which he participated. His calm personality and humbleness made him a role model to a generation of younger officers and to the cadets of NDA, where he was once posted as an instructor in Foxtrot Squadron. He also led from front in all difficult situations, and July 4 was no different. They flew out on a short notice, rescued 169 people, and on the last sortie did not carry any civilians back in spite of nine of them waiting at at Sagalee as the weather was expected to turn uncertain. He went down, doing what he loved most, flying and helping people," Konwer said.

The Defence PRO said that his untimely demise has left the Rimcollian and the IAF community in shock, and all his course mates and friends shattered.

He is survived by a wife, and two young children.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)