Hyderabad/New Delhi, Sep 3 - Grief swept through India's southern state of Andhra Pradesh and much of the country Thursday with the tragic death of Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, a dyanmic politician who was killed when his helicopter exploded in the dark rain clouds over a deep forest a day earlier.

The ruling Congress' charismatic leader, left home for Chittoor, 600 km away, for a mass contact programme in a remote village Wednesday morning and never returned. On Thursday, almost 24 hours later, the mutilated remains of his body and four others who were with him on the Bell helicopter were found on a hilltop in the dense Nallamalla forests in Kurnool, about 200 km from here.

In one of the biggest searches mounted in the country, helicopters, remote sensing unmanned aerial vehicles and even barefoot villagers hunted in pouring rain for a whole day and night in the forested hinterland for the wreckage, which was finally located about 40 nautical miles east of Kurnool town.

The helicopter had broken into several parts and the bodies had been charred, a sombre Home Minister P. Chidambaram said in Delhi while making the official pronouncement of the death of the 60-year-old leader.

'I am officially confirming the tragic deaths,' Chidambaram stated.

Para commandos had to rappel down slippery slopes to retrieve the bodies, some who could only be recognised by the clothes they wore.

'It appears that because of inclement weather and to avoid cloud formation, the pilot had taken a detour from the preliminary inquiry... it appeared the chopper went and hit the cliff of a hillock,' added state Chief Secretary P. Ramakant Reddy.

With YSR, who this May steered the Congress to a second stint in power, was his special secretary P. Subrahmanyam, his chief security officer A.S.C. Wesley and the two pilots of the ill-fated helicopter -- Group Captain S.K. Bhatia and Captain M.S. Reddy.

There was shock, disbelief and tears in Andhra Pradesh as the late chief minister's body reached Hyderabad in the evening and crowds milled around trying to come to terms with the enormity of the tragedy.

'He is my god. I can't believe that he is no more,' said an inconsolable Congress worker.