Sixth body found in Beas river tragedy

Rescue teams on Wednesday retrieved the body of a student from the Beas and intensified the hunt for 19 others, while a case of negligence was registered against authorities of the Larji Hydropower project.

The body was recovered near Hanogi, raising the total number of bodies recovered so far to six, Indo-Tibetan Border Police Commandant Lakshman said. The victim has been identified as M D Shabir Hussain Shaik and identification of the body was done by his mother Ayisha Begum, who was camping at Kullu.

SP Mandi R S Negi said that a case under sections 336 (act endangering life or personal safety of others) and 304-A (causing death by negligence) of the IPC has been registered against the authorities of Larji project. The FIR was registered by A Aditya, a teacher accompanying the students.

Rescuers, meanwhile, continued to search for the 19 missing students, including 18 students of a Hyderabad-based institute.

“Intensive search operation are on along 20 km stretch of the Beas from Thalot (the accident spot) to Pandoh Dam but the river is full of boulders and silt level is high.The bodies are either trapped under boulders or sunk in the silt and we are searching every boulder,” Jaideep Singh, commanding officer, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), said. A team of 84 people, comprising 20 NDRF divers, assisted by 18 divers of the Army are searching for bodies and chances of the bodies flowing downstream to Pandoh Dam are very slim.

The search teams are expecting the swollen bodies to surface by Thursday but chances of survival are bleak.

Four bodies recovered on Monday were flown to Hyderabad and cremated on Tuesday, while the fifth body of Devashish Bose was flown to Hyderabad on Tuesday evening.

Officials said that the Beas being a snow-fed river, the water level increases as the day advances and reaches its peak at night. However, the discharge of water is minimum during the morning hours and search operations are comparatively easy.