Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s chopper made an emergency landing at the Sevoke airbase on Tuesday afternoon after the flight met with inclement weather on its way to Bagdogra airport.

Banerjee reportedly sustained injuries on her hip and leg at the time of disembarking from the chopper under precarious conditions at the Sevoke airbase in Siliguri but the seriousness of her injuries couldn’t be ascertained.

Banerjee’s helicopter took off from the makeshift helipad at the Kranti Maidan in Jalpaiguri around 12.50 pm following the Trinamul Congress supremo’s panchayat poll campaign in that area. Banerjee’s 13-minute flight from Jalpaiguri was aiming to reach the Bagdogra airport from where she was supposed to take her return flight to Calcutta.

Although it was drizzling when the chopper took off from Jalpaiguri, the weather quickly turned extremely dangerous over the Baikunthapur forest area some 10 minutes into the flight with torrential rains lashing the aircraft from thick dark clouds packing all three corners in the direction in which the helicopter was headed, it was learnt.

Assessing that the risk was too high to continue flying towards Bagdogra, the pilot swerved the chopper in the only direction which looked relatively clear, which was towards the hills in the North. A couple of minutes later the flyers realized they were over the Sevoke airbase at the Himalayan foothills and made an emergency landing. “There wasn’t time to even secure the mandatory landing permission from the Air Force,” a co-flier confirmed.

Senior officers of the armed forces quickly rushed to the helipad and escorted the chief minister and her co-fliers to safety, it was learnt.

Banerjee reached Calcutta at around 4.30 pm and headed straight for the SSKM Hospital from the airport. She reached the Woodburn Block of the hospital 35 minutes later where, besides senior authorities of the hospital, Biman Banerjee, Speaker of the state Legislative Assembly, BP Gopalika, state home secretary, Narayan Swarup Nigam, health secretary and Vineet Goyal, Police Commissioner of Calcutta were among those present.

Banerjee refused the wheelchair that was kept ready but took the support of a senior doctor to walk to the ward. A visible discomfiture writ large on the chief minister’s face even as she got down from the car and she was seen limping on her left foot.

Meanwhile, Bengal governor CV Ananda Bose reportedly called up Banerjee enquiring about her health and later put out a tweet expressing his relief about the chief minister’s safety following the emergency landing of her chopper.

Speaker Biman Banerjee later told reporters that the chief minister was being examined by multiple doctors in the ward and her condition would be explained by means of a medical bulletin from the hospital.

This isn’t the first time that Banerjee has had to encounter mid-air scare. Major air turbulence hit her aircraft during her return from a political campaign in Uttar Pradesh last year. The plane also experienced a sharp loss in altitude on account of a deep air pocket the plane ran into.