Three people were killed after a private helicopter crashed and caught fire in Pune district of Maharashtra on Wednesday morning.
The helicopter, belonging to a Delhi-based private aviation firm, Heritage Aviation, took off from the Oxford Golf Course helipad in Pune and was heading to Juhu in Mumbai when the accident took place in the hilly Bavdhan area at 6.45 am.
According to police, two pilots—Girish Kumar Pillai and Paramjit Singh—and an engineer, Pritamchand Bharadwaj, died in the accident. "Three persons have died in the helicopter crash. Our teams along with fire department vehicles have reached the spot," Pimpri Chinchwad Commissioner of Police Vinaykumar Choubey said.
After the crash, the chopper caught fire.
The area has been cordoned off and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) will conduct a probe into the accident, the police added.
"When we reached the spot, we saw that the chopper had crashed and all its parts had scattered. There was a smouldering fire. We were able to extract three casualties and these were handed over to police," chief fire officer Devendra Prabhakar Potphode has been quoted as saying.
The cause of the crash was yet to be ascertained. Police have suggested that dense fog could possibly have been the reason for the accident.