Dehra Dun: Bodies of eight members of a
West Bengal trekking team, which had gone missing from
Gangotri-Kalindikhal trek following turbulent weather in upper
Himalayan reaches ten months ago, have been spotted, a senior
official said on Tuesday.
The bodies of three trekkers and five porters were
spotted in a tent between Sita glacier and Tapovan by a
trekking team three days ago. The team was on way to Satopanth
peak, Sub Divisional Magistrate of Bhatwari Chandra Singh
Dharmsattu said.
The team, also from West Bengal, established the
identity of the bodies on the basis of their documents and
other belongings and later informed the Uttarkashi district
administration about it, the SDM said.
The administration is now planning to send a team to
recover the bodies in view of fresh information made available
by the trekking team, he said.
The team led by Alind Mukherji was going to scale
Satopanth peak. However, it returned from midway yesterday as
the weather became turbulent, Dharmsattu said.
The eight-member team had gone missing in September
last year. After that, the district administration had
launched a search operation with the help of army helicopters
and Indo-Tibetan Border Police, but they failed to trace them
due to continuous heavy snowfall in the area.
The then West Bengal Ministers Kanti Ganguly and Srikumar
Mukherjee, along with a rescue team, had also made an
unsuccessful attempt to search them.
The administration had later abandoned the search
operation.
PTI
