Nine Bengaluru trekkers die in Uttarakhand ranges

• 13 in 22-member team rescued; tragedy due to extreme weather conditions
• Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda in Uttarakhand to monitor rescue operation

Bengaluru: Nine trekkers from Bengaluru, who went trekking on the Sahastra Tal-Mayali stretch in the Garhwal mountain ranges of the Himalayas in Uttarakhand, have died due to extreme weather conditions. 13 other trekkers, part of the 22-member group, were rescued in operations conducted yesterday and today.

The deceased have been identified as Asha Sudhakar, Padmanabha Kundapur Krishnamurthy, Sindhu Vakekalam, K.N. Venkatesha Prasad, Anita Rangappa, Padmini Hegde, Chitra Praneeth, Vinayak Mungurwadi and Sujatha Mungurwadi. The bodies of Padmanabha Kundapur Krishnamurthy, K.N. Venkatesha Prasad, Anita Rangappa and Padmini Hegde were retrieved this morning, while the others were retrieved yesterday.

Among the 13 survivors, S. Sudhakar, M.K. Vinay, Vivek Sridhar, A. Naveen and Rittika Jindal were rescued this morning. Preparations are underway to send them to Uttarkashi town in Uttarakhand by flight.

The other trekkers, Bharat Bommanagoudar, Soumya Kanale, B.S. Jayaprakash, S. Shiva Jyothi, Sheena Lakshmi, Madhu

Kiran Reddy, Smruti Dolas and Anil Jammatige Arunachala Bhatta, were rescued yesterday and shifted to Dehradun.

The trekkers were stranded, and nine of them met their tragic end before the rescue party could reach them due to extreme weather conditions, which made it impossible for the trekkers to reach the base camp.

Karnataka Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda, who flew to Uttarakhand to monitor the rescue operations, met with the Chief Secretary of Uttarakhand Radha Raturi and Secretary of Disaster Management Dr. Ranjit Kumar Sinha to assess the situation. He said, “Nine trekkers had died even before the rescue team could reach them. All surviving trekkers have been rescued and their condition is stable. I have personally met  them.”

After completing the process of embalming the bodies in Dehradun and conducting post-           mortems in Uttarkashi this morning, arrangements have been made to transport their bodies back to Bengaluru by a chartered flight, he added.

According to a statement by the Karnataka Revenue Department, ten officials from the Forest Department, two Revenue Inspectors, two Home Guards, and a few local villagers were deployed on Wednesday morning. They were later joined by six State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) soldiers.