India defence chief among 13 dead in helicopter crash

Indian defence chief General Bipin Rawat was among 13 people killed in a helicopter crash on Wednesday, raising questions over the future of military reforms he was leading.

Rawat was India's first chief of defence staff, a position that the government established in 2019, and was seen as close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The 63-year-old was travelling with his wife and other senior officers in the Russian-made Mi-17 chopper, which crashed near its destination in southern Tamil Nadu state.

Modi said Rawat was an outstanding soldier and "true patriot" who had helped modernise the country's armed forces.

"His passing away has saddened me deeply," the prime minister wrote on Twitter. "India will never forget his exceptional service."

Strategic analyst and author Brahma Chellaney tweeted that Rawat's death "couldn't have come at a worse time" when "China's 20-month-long border aggression has resulted in a warlike situation along the Himalayan front".

Footage from the crash showed a crowd of people trying to extinguish the fiery wreck with water buckets while a group of soldiers carried one of the passengers away on an improvised stretcher.

Rawat was headed to the Defence Services Staff College (DSSC) to address students and faculty from the nearby Sulur air force base in Coimbatore.

The chopper was already making its descent at the time of the crash and came down around 10 kilometres (six miles) from the nearest main road, forcing emergency workers to trek to the accident site, a fire official told AFP.

An eyewitness at the scene said he had seen passengers falling from the helicopter before the crash, and that one person had crawled out from the wreckage.

The sole survivor, a captain working at the DSSC, was being treated for his injuries at a nearby military hospital, the air force said.

- 'Big shoes to fill' -

Rawat was chief of the 1.3-million-strong army from 2017 to 2019 before his elevation to defence services chief, which analysts said was to improve coordination between the army, navy and air force.

New Delhi is looking to increase its military effectiveness in the face of heightened tensions with China following deadly clashes in a disputed Himalayan region, as well as its longstanding conflict with neighbouring Pakistan.

"He had given a tremendous push to the integration of the three services, so his successor has big shoes to fill," retired Lieutenant General DS Hooda, a former head of the Indian army's Northern Command, told AFP.

"He had a tough job... we will need someone to give the same impetus that he had given so that the reforms that he started continue at the same pace."

Messages poured in from around the globe, with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin calling Rawat "a valued partner and friend of the United States" who left "an indelible mark on the course of the US-India defense partnership."

UN chief Antonio Guterres expressed "his heartfelt condolences to the families of the deceased and to the people and government of India," his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, recalling Rawat's time as a brigade commander in the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008 and 2009.

- Career officer -

Rawat came from a military family, with several generations having served in the Indian armed forces.

He joined the army as a second lieutenant in 1978 and had four decades of service behind him, having commanded forces in Indian-administered Kashmir and along the Line of Actual Control bordering China.

Rawat was credited with reducing insurgency on India's northeastern frontier and supervised a cross-border counter-insurgency operation into neighbouring Myanmar.

But at the same time he was a polarising figure whose willingness to make political statements put him at odds with the military's traditional neutrality in the world's largest democracy.

He was considered close to the Modi government and turned heads last month when he reportedly made an approving reference to "lynching terrorists" in Kashmir.

The Mi-17 helicopter, which first entered service in the 1970s and is in wide use by defence services around the world, has been involved in a number of accidents over the years.

Fourteen people died in a crash last month when an Azerbaijani military Mi-17 chopper went down during a training flight.

In 2019, four Indonesian soldiers were killed and five others wounded in central Java in another training accident involving the aircraft.

India's air force said an inquiry was under way into Wednesday's accident.

India's Bipin Rawat: a soldier's general
New Delhi (AFP) Dec 8, 2021 - India's Bipin Rawat was an outspoken, polarising but hugely popular "soldier's general" who was wounded in a border battle and survived an aircraft crash before dying in a helicopter accident Wednesday.

The military in the world's largest democracy has traditionally stayed well clear of political debates, unlike neighbouring Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, all of which have seen multiple coups.

The 63-year-old Rawat -- seen as close to Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi -- upended that norm, openly speaking out on issues ranging from foreign policy and geopolitics to domestic political questions.

And as army chief he said that citizens should fear their own country's forces.

"Adversaries must be afraid of you and at the same time your people must be afraid of you," he said in 2017. "We are a friendly Army, but when we are called to restore law and order, people have to be afraid of us."

Two years later activists and opposition politicians accused him of violating the oath of his apolitical office after he condemned protests against a new citizenship law that critics said discriminated against Muslims.

Rawat came from a military family who have served in the Indian armed forces for generations.

He joined the army as a second lieutenant in 1978 and was shot in a firefight with Pakistani forces when he was stationed at a remote border post in Kashmir.

"We came under heavy cross-fire from Pakistan. A bullet hit me on my ankle and a piece of shrapnel grazed my right hand," he told the India Today magazine, requiring surgery and lengthy rehabilitation -- and earning him India's Wound Medal.

Over four decades of service, he commanded forces in Indian-administered Kashmir and along the Line of Actual Control bordering China.

In 2015, he was in charge of an operation in Myanmar against separatists, India's first publicly acknowledged strike against an insurgent group on foreign territory.

He survived a helicopter crash in Nagaland the same year with minor injuries, when his aircraft came down nose-first within seconds of take-off.

- 'Neither modernised nor westernised' -

Rawat was the chief of 1.3 million-strong army from 2017 to 2019 before his elevation as the country's first chief of defence staff, a post created specifically for him.

He ruffled Beijing's feathers by repeatedly questioning its actions at their disputed borders and warning Nepal about China's growing footprint.

The Chinese military protested his recent public comments that China was the biggest security threat for India.

Many predicted Rawat could have successfully run for public office after retirement.

His frontline actions on turbulent frontiers and unrelenting support for his troops, whatever their actions, made him hugely popular among Indian soldiers.

The "armed forces find huge resonance in the conservative actions of our society", he said as army chief, decrying the prospect of gay people being allowed to serve.

"The Army is conservative. We have neither modernised nor westernised."

Rawat in 2017 lamented that protesters in Kashmir were only throwing stones at his forces, rather than using firearms. "Then I would have been happy," he told the Press Trust of India, as it would have allowed him to respond as he wanted.

As army chief he awarded a prestigious commendation to an army Major who tied a Kashmiri civilian to the front of his military vehicle as a human shield to prevent protestors attacking his team.

"This is a proxy war and proxy war is a dirty war," he said. "It is played in a dirty way."

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