Group Captain Varun Singh won the Shaurya Chakra in August.
New Delhi:
Group Captain Varun Singh, the lone survivor of the helicopter crash in which Chief of Defense Staff General Bipin Rawat and 12 others were killed, is “serious, but stable”. Defense Minister Rajnath Singh told Parliament that he is on life support and “all efforts are being made to save him”.
Group Captain Singh, who was seriously injured, is undergoing treatment at the Military Hospital in Wellington.
“He is serious but stable at this time,” officials said today.
The Air Force officer had won the Shaurya Chakra in August for his courage to handle his aircraft after being hit by major technical issues during a flight last year. He landed his Tejas fighter safely despite the mid-air emergency.
Group Captain Singh went to Sulur to receive General Rawat and take him to the Defense Services Staff College, Wellington. General Rawat was to address the faculty and students at the institute, where Group Captain Singh was the directing staff.
Group Captain Singh’s ancestral village is in Deoria in eastern Uttar Pradesh and father KP Singh is retired from the army as a colonel. State Congress leader Akhilesh Pratap Singh is his uncle.
Talking to the media, Group Captain Singh’s uncle Dinesh Pratap Singh said, “He is currently in the hospital, we will get information about his condition when the Air Force issues a bulletin.”
Rescue officials said the bodies recovered from the crash site were badly burnt.
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