BackBravery award for IAF officers killed in Budgam chopper crash after friendly fire
Two IAF officers, Squadron Leaders Siddharth Vashisht and Ninad Mandavgan have been posthumously awarded the Vayu Sena gallantry medal on the occasion of Republic DayThe incident of friendly fire took place while the Indian and Pakistani air forces were engaged in a dogfight on 27 Feb last year
PremiumNEW DELHI : Two Indian Air Force officers, Squadron Leaders Siddharth Vashisht and Ninad Mandavgan, who were piloting a helicopter that was shot down in a friendly fire in Kashmir’s Budgam area last year, have been posthumously awarded the Vayu Sena gallantry medal on the occasion of Republic Day.
Four other IAF personnel on board the chopper — flight engineer Vishal Kumar Pandey, sergeant Vikrant Sehrawat, corporals Deepak Pandey and Pankaj Kumar -- have been awarded ‘Mention-in-Despatches’ (MID) posthumously by President Ram Nath Kovind. MID is an official note by a senior officer that records a soldier’s bravery during an attack.
The incident of friendly fire took place while the Indian and Pakistani air forces were engaged in a dogfight on 27 February last year. It occurred at a time when the Pakistani airforce retaliated to the Indian Air Force bombing a terrorist training camp in Balakot inside Pakistan a day earlier. The Indian Air Force chopper that was shot down was a
Russian-made MI-17 which had six personnel on board besides one civilian. According to two people familiar with the matter, the helicopter was mistaken for a possible Pakistani drone sent to target the Srinagar airport and shot down by the IAF’s Israeli-made Spyder air defence system.
At a press conference in October, Indian Air Force chief RKS Bhadauria had admitted that the MI-17 was brought down by friendly fire and that it was a “big mistake."
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