NEW DELHI — At 6:41 pm on 27 February, as the fate of captured fighter pilot Abhinandan Vartaman dominated the newscycle, the Indian Air Force released a quiet three line press release:

On 27 February 2019, one Mi-17 V5 helicopter of Indian Air Force got airborne from Srinagar airfield at 1000 hrs for a routine mission. The helicopter crashed around 1010 hrs near Budgam, J&K. All six air warriors on board the helicopter, suffered fatal injuries. A court of inquiry has been ordered to investigate the accident.

Some of this morning’s papers were careful to include the word “routine” in their copy, as if to say these six deaths, like the helicopter sortie, were part of the everyday life of the Indian Republic.

“Keep Moving Folks,” the press release seemed to say. “Nothing to see here.”

Just some routine deaths that routinely happen on a routine sortie.

These six deaths, the IAF press release and most of the media wanted us to believe, were in no way related to the Air Force led operation along the Line Of Control, where the Pakistan Air Force had shot down an Indian MiG 21 and captured its pilot.

Yet surely no Air Force sortie in Kashmir, on a morning when the Indian and Pakistan Air Force are literally shooting each other’s jets out of the sky, can be described as entirely “routine.” So why is the Air Force so determined to distance this one helicopter flight from everything that happened in Kashmir that day?

Because these deaths, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Ministry of Defence, desperately want us to believe, were not related to Modi’s impulsive decision to upturn decades of Indian foreign policy and military doctrine.

These deaths, in short, should not be included in the human costs of Modi’s misadventure.

The whitewashing was so determined that when external affairs ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar read out a brief press statement in the afternoon on 27 February, he didn’t even mention the crash.

Air Vice Marshal RGK Kapoor sat beside Kumar; he must have known that his men were dead — many in the media already knew. But Vice Marshal Kapoor said nothing.

And of course, neither gentleman took any questions.