Who Is Group Captain Varun Singh, Sole Survivor Of Fatal IAF Crash In Tamil Nadu?

In a fatal crash of an IAF helicopter in Tamil Nadu, 13 people, including CDS Bipin Rawat and his wife, were killed on Wednesday.

The helicopter had 14 people on board when it crashed in Tamil Nadu's Coonoor. The only survivor of the fatal crash is Group Captain Varun Singh.

Singh is a Shaurya Chakra awardee. On Independence Day this year, he received the honour for saving his LCA Tejas fighter aircraft during an aerial emergency in 2020.

Shaurya Chakra is India’s third highest peacetime gallantry award. In October 2020, Singh, then a Wing Commander was flying a system check sortie in LCA when a glitch happened.

"He correctly identified the failure and initiated a descent to lower altitude for landing. While descending, the Flight Control System failed and led to total loss of control of the aircraft. This was an unprecedented catastrophic failure that had never occurred," the Defence Ministry said in a statement then.