Bodies of missing trekkers spotted in upper Himalayas

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.