A little over a month later, Salunke, 44, was himself gone, killed along with four friends from Bengaluru when the helicopter carrying them back from Badrinath crashed near Jyotirmath (Joshimath) in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district on Friday.
“Gone too soon, brother,” Bengaluru police inspector Arun Salunke had written on Instagram on August 28, mourning the death of a colleague from the Central Crime Branch (CCB).
Bengaluru police official among dead
He served at Halasuru police station and in the Criminal Investigation Department before becoming an inspector with the Bengaluru Police’s CCB. “Arun Salunke was a very good person. Karnataka minister Priyank Kharge expressed condolences over the deaths, saying the loss of Kannadigas in the crash was heartbreaking.
Salunke, a 2007-batch Karnataka police officer from Aratal village in Athani taluk of Belagavi district, had completed his education at MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology in Bengaluru before joining the police force. The other passengers killed in the crash were identified as H S Nataraj, 51, Prathap Ningraju, 41, Sudheer K, 49, and Shankar Gowda, 39.
Dasappa, the owner of the apartment building where Salunke had lived as a tenant for three years, said the inspector was friendly with everyone and had maintained good relations with residents. He was friendly with everyone in the apartment,” Dasappa said. All five passengers were residents of Bengaluru, according to Uttarakhand authorities. He said Salunke’s death was particularly painful for the police department and offered condolences to the families of all five passengers and the pilot.
His family had been expecting him home on Friday evening. “He was happily married and had a family life.
Prajwal, a coffee planter and Prathap’s brother-in-law, said the five friends had left for the pilgrimage three days earlier. “We were all waiting for them to come back, but instead received the tragic news,” he said. The entire family is in tears,” Prajwal said.
