Dehradun, Oct. 31 -- Six people, including five friends from Bengaluru returning from Badrinath, were killed after a helicopter crashed near Joshimath in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district on Friday afternoon, officials said. The crash occurred amid deteriorating weather, with rain and poor visibility reported along the route. One of the passengers had spoken to a childhood friend just hours before the crash, describing how the group was waiting inside the helicopter for the weather to clear. The helicopter, operated by Trans Bharat Aviation and bearing call sign VT-HCX, took off from Badrinath at around 1.12pm for Sahastradhara in Dehradun. It lost communication shortly afterwards whilst flying over the Jyotirmath valley, and its tracking system stopped showing its location, said NK Joshi, district disaster management officer, Chamoli. The crash adds to a grim record in a stretch of Himalayan terrain where weather changes rapidly and helicopter operations have historically run without air traffic control or reliable meteorological support. The AAIB recorded eight accidents and one serious incident in the Char Dham sector between 2015 and 2025. The cause of Friday's crash is not yet established. The incident was reported through an Army post. Joint teams of the Army, police, district administration and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) were mobilised from Pandukeshwar and Jyotirmath, while drone teams were deployed from Gopeshwar, the district headquarters. An Army team reached the crash site - near Chayee village, close to a hill in the Marwari area of Jyotirmath - at 3.30pm and confirmed that all six people on board had died. The bodies were found in difficult mountainous and forested terrain. The Army cautioned the district administration about Himalayan bears in the area, and in view of the hazardous conditions and approaching darkness, officials decided against further movement overnight. The Army team will remain at the site to guard the bodies until the search and rescue operation resumes at 5am on Saturday. The pilot was identified as Capt Himanshu Sabharwal, 48, a Delhi resident. The five passengers - all residents of Bengaluru - were Arun Salunke, 44, Prathap Ningraju, 41, VB Shankar Gowda, 39, Sudhir K, 49, and HS Nataraj, 51. The five friends had set out on the Char Dham pilgrimage three days earlier and were expected to return to Bengaluru on Friday evening. Their families and friends were waiting for them when news of the crash came. Dasappa, the owner of the apartment building where Salunke had lived for three years, said he was friendly with everyone in the building. Shankar Gowda, an advocate, occasionally visited the apartment, Dasappa said. The Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority said Trans Bharat Aviation's entire fleet had been grounded as a precautionary measure. Chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said he was monitoring the rescue operation and had directed officials to airlift any seriously injured person to a higher medical centre. "We have received the unfortunate news of a helicopter crash near Chayee village, close to Joshimath," he said in a statement on X. The crash is the first in Uttarakhand since the civil aviation ministry introduced sweeping safety measures for the 2026 pilgrimage season. These included air traffic control at Sahastradhara and Sersi, command centres monitoring helipads and weather, tracking devices on all helicopters, and ceilometers - instruments that measure cloud-base height - at five locations including Kedarnath and Badrinath. Pilots were required to have at least 750 hours of hill flying, with 100 in the preceding year. The ministry had said the first phase of the season passed without incident. The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), in its final report on a June 2025 crash near Kedarnath that killed seven, recorded eight accidents and one serious incident in the Char Dham sector between 2015 and 2025. It recommended that pilots complete 50 hours of supervised hill flying before operating alone in the Kedarnath valley, that the regulator exercise oversight of the Sitapur control centre, and that radio communications between pilots and ground controllers be recorded....