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A pilot and two provincial ministers, one of them a billionaire industrialist, were killed on Thursday when their helicopter crashed in a village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, police said.

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Two others on board the seven-seat private executive helicopter were injured in the crash in the village of Gangoh, police superintendent S. A. Rizvi said, adding that one of them was in critical condition.

Haryana state power minister Om Prakash Jindal ¡ª head of the $2.2-billion steel manufacturing Jindal group ¡ª his colleague, agriculture minister Surinder Singh, and the pilot died instantly when the French-made aircraft crashed after a mid-air engine failure, officials said.

Survivor Ved Goyal, a relative of Jindal, later told private television networks that the New Delhi-bound aircraft came down moments after its engine failed some 30 minutes after taking off from the Harayana state capital of Chandigarh.

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The Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has ordered an enquiry into the helicopter crash that took place near Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh today in which three persons, including two Haryana Ministers were killed.

The Joint Director in the DGCA, P.K. Chattopadhyay, has been appointed the Inspector of Accidents to head the enquiry, official sources said.

The ill-fated helicopter, VTVYJ type B-120, of India Flying Safe Aviation Limited (Jindal Group) took off from Chandigarh at 11.32 a.m. and landed at Rajinder Park helipad to pick its passengers en route Delhi. It reported over Sarswa Air Traffic Control near Saharanpur at 12.17 noon.

ATC asked the copter to report when he was 15 metres out of Sarsawa, after which the copter lost contact. The crash site is reported to be 25 km from tehsil Nakud.

The pilot was Col. T.S. Chauhan who had been checked and certified by Eurocopter in December 2004.

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The Haryana Agriculture Minister, Surender Singh, 59, and his Cabinet colleague and industrialist, O.P. Jindal, 75, were killed this afternoon when their helicopter crashed near Mehnge village here. They were on their way from Chandigarh to New Delhi.

Mr. Surender Singh is the son of the former Chief Minister, Bansi Lal. Mr. Jindal, father of Naveen Jindal, Congress MP, held the Power portfolio.

The pilot, P. S. Chauhan, was alive when the villagers reached the crash site, but died later. The other two occupants of the French-made Euro King helicopter — Haryana MLA Ved Goyal, and Mr. Jindal's Personal Security Officer, Vinod Kumar — miraculously survived with leg and back injuries. They were admitted to hospital here.

The helicopter, with the call sign of VTVYJ had been one of two bought by Mr. Jindal six months ago and had been used extensively in the last Haryana Assembly elections. It had lifted off from Chandigarh around noon. It crashed 35 minutes later after apparently developing a technical snag. An eyewitness, Sukhdev Singh, who was working on the fields when the chopper crashed less than 100 metres from him, said: "The helicopter from which a strange sound was emanating had first flown past Mehnge village. However, it soon returned wobbling in the air and hovered around a bit as the pilot was apparently looking for a wet field to land on. But then it just crashed on the field where peasants were cutting wheat."

Mr. Singh said on hitting the ground, the helicopter first went up 20 feet in the air before coming down on its left side.

"Since the chopper had not caught fire, villagers immediately rushed to it and pulled out all the five persons. Mr. Jindal and Mr. Singh were already dead," he said.

The last rites of Mr. Singh and Mr. Jindal will be held with full state honours in Bhiwani and Hissar. The Haryana Government has declared a three-day State mourning. The Directorate-General of Civil Aviation has instituted an inquiry into the crash, the Civil Aviation Minister, Praful Patel, said in New Delhi.

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