Mumbai: A group of women, who are wives of Army officers who fly and service the Cheetah and Chetak helicopters, want phasing out of these archaic flying machines that have been involved in 191 crashes over the past two decades.
They plan to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to submit their petition seeking replacement of these machines.
According to the Indian Army Wives' Agitation Group, the 191 crashes have claimed 294 lives. On an average, there are three to four Army Aviation accidents every year.
The last crash happened on October 1 when a Cheetah belonging to the Army Aviation crashed in Uttar Pradesh's Bareilly district, leading to the death of two pilots and an engineer.
The Army still has 120 of these machines. Some of these copters, that crashed in the high altitudes of Jammu and Kashmir's Siachen, have been untraceable along with the officers on board.
24/11/14 Ganesh N/Mail Today/India Today
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They plan to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar to submit their petition seeking replacement of these machines.
According to the Indian Army Wives' Agitation Group, the 191 crashes have claimed 294 lives. On an average, there are three to four Army Aviation accidents every year.
The last crash happened on October 1 when a Cheetah belonging to the Army Aviation crashed in Uttar Pradesh's Bareilly district, leading to the death of two pilots and an engineer.
The Army still has 120 of these machines. Some of these copters, that crashed in the high altitudes of Jammu and Kashmir's Siachen, have been untraceable along with the officers on board.
24/11/14 Ganesh N/Mail Today/India Today
