New Delhi: The hunt for YS Rajasekhara Reddy's crashed chopper lasted for 24 hours with all the resources of the state and Centre concentrated in Andhra Pradesh’s Nallamala forest.
IAF Sukhois, remote-sensing planes, elite commandos and 6,000 CRPF men were put into service, but was it too much too late?
Questions are being raised about the time it took to find the debris. It took 24 hours despite thousands of men on ground and over a dozen aircraft to trace the body of the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister.
Tough terrain and rains made the task difficult but did the confusion about YSR's whereabouts delay the search beyond excuse?
The Chief Minister's plane went off radar at 0910 hours IST on Wednesday. Yet even three hours later Civil Aviation officials were saying he had landed safely.
As TV channels scrambled for details, the Chief Minister's office kept insisting it had made contact with him, many looked to Sakshi TV, which is owned by Reddy's son Jaganmohan, that said he was being flown to Hyderabad by an Army helicopter.
But it was at an official briefing seven hours after the CM went missing that speculation ended. The briefing confirmed that no contact had been made with the missing chopper.
What was worse that YSR had only one security official and no satellite phone on board the chopper.
But precious daylight had been wasted, it was nearly sundown when the first fixed wing aircraft was deployed and 2010 hours IST when a Sukhoi 30 was scrambled to look for thermal images.
On foot, searches by commando teams like the Greyhounds, Octopus and Cobra forces along with the Army and thousands of CRPF personal, all proved fruitless.
And by then it was all too late.
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