Did officials know on Wed that YSR was dead?

Late on Wednesday afternoon, a few hours after the chopper carrying Y S Rajasekhara Reddy went missing, intelligence officials had darkly
indicated to TOI that the helicopter had gone down with an explosion. Around the same time, a senior police official from Kurnool district said, in an equally hush-hush manner, that the helicopter had landed in Veligonda region of Nallamala hills.
A day later, with news about YSR's death confirmed in the manner suggested by the intelligence officer and at the very same place revealed by the cop a day earlier, the big question is — was this a remarkable coincidence of two sharp speculations proving right or was there actual information that no one broke pending an official announcement?
Or perhaps the answer lies in the simple fact that YSR had emerged as such a colossus in the state, and so inspired awe and fear in equal measure, that nobody could muster courage to publicly articulate intelligent conjectures about his death. That this was the reason why misinformation was going back and forth on Wednesday about how Rajasekhara Reddy was found alive and taken to safety, only to be denied within minutes.
03/09/09 Kingshuk Nag/Times of India

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Sep 2009, Safety Sep 2009