Eight trekkers, including five residents of Bankura in West Bengal, have gone missing after reportedly being caught in a snowstorm during a trek from Gangotri to Kedartal in Uttarakhand. The Uttarakhand administration has been conducting a helicopter-assisted search in the high Himalayan region, but the missing group had not been located when the report was published.
The group reached Gangotri in the last week of October and was planning to trek to Kedartal. The five Bankura residents have been identified as Tapas Bauri, Ratan Ghosh, Rintu Mondal and Uday Ghosh from Shalbani village, and Manoj Khowas from Keshra village. The group also included two residents of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh and one resident of Uttarkashi in Uttarakhand.
Four additional people, including a sherpa and assistants, were accompanying the eight trekkers. According to the report, those members managed to descend from the mountains on October 30 and informed authorities that the eight-person group had been caught in a snowstorm.
The Uttarakhand State Disaster Response Force has since been searching the specified area with the assistance of a helicopter operated through the Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority. The search had continued for two days, but officials had not found any trace of the missing trekkers. The operation is being conducted in difficult high-altitude terrain, where weather conditions have repeatedly interrupted search efforts.
The Uttarakhand government has said that adverse weather in the higher Himalayan region was affecting the operation. The administration has also contacted the families of the missing trekkers and assured them of support as the search continues.
Families in Bankura said they had been unable to contact the trekkers. Sintu Mondal, the elder brother of missing trekker Rintu Mondal, said Rintu regularly travelled to the mountains with friends during the festive season. He told the source that he had last spoken to his brother on the previous Monday and that Rintu’s phone had remained switched off since then.
Lalmohan Bauri, the father of Tapas Bauri, said his son had told the family that he would return home before Kali Puja. He said police later visited the family and informed them that the group had not been located.
The incident comes days after a separate helicopter crash in Uttarakhand. A helicopter carrying five pilgrims from Badrinath towards Dehradun crashed near Hathi Parvat in Joshimath on Friday, killing all six people on board, including the pilot. The five passengers were from Karnataka and the pilot was from Delhi.
Following that crash, the Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority said an adverse-weather warning had been issued and that flights had been ordered to stop. The state administration questioned why the helicopter had been allowed to operate despite the warning. The two incidents have occurred against the backdrop of difficult weather conditions affecting high-altitude operations in the state.
The Uttarakhand administration’s helicopter-assisted search for the eight missing trekkers is continuing, subject to weather conditions in the search area.
