2 more bodies found buried in snow

Dehradun/Uttarkashi: Bodies of two more trekkers, who were part of a group of eight that went missing six days ago on the Kedartal route, were recovered on Wednesday, officials said. Both recovered bodies are of men, they added. On Tuesday, bodies of two trekkers were found buried in an avalanche at the Kedarkhadak area, where the group had been camping.

The bodies were flown by helicopter from Kedartal to Matli, about 100 kilometres away, at around 11.52 am, as anxious families of the missing trekkers, including five from West Bengal and two from Uttar Pradesh, began arriving in Uttarkashi. From there, they were taken in hearse vans to the district hospital in Uttarkashi, about 10 km away.

According to the tehsildar of Bhatwadi, the bodies of two trekkers who were recovered on Tuesday have been identified by their family members at the Uttarkashi District Hospital. They are Vartika Verma, aged 28, and her sister, Deepika Verma, aged 29, daughters of Narayan Verma, residents of Gayatri Puram in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Identification of the two other bodies is underway, officials said. Earlier, the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) had said that the two bodies found on Tuesday were of a man and a woman.

A 10-member team of the SDRF and Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM) has been conducting search operation at Kedarkhadak to trace the missing trekkers amid difficult terrain and challenging conditions. Officials said 10 to 12 feet of snow has accumulated in the area due to the avalanche, hampering the rescue operations. They added that the rescue team is digging snow by hand, citing difficulty in deploying the snow-removal machines to the avalanche area.

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The Hans India