Five trekkers from Bengal who had gone missing in the Himalayas in Uttarakhand amid bad weather were found dead on Tuesday after a search that stretched nearly five days.
The bodies of Sadhan Basak, 63, Sagar Dey, 27, Sarit Sekhar Das, 37, Chandra Sekhar Das, 32, and Preetam Roy, 27 were found in the Sunderdhunga region of Bagheswar district by a 13-member team of Uttarakhand’s state disaster response force.
The bodies of five other trekkers who died while trekking from Harshil in Uttarakhand to Chitkul in Himachal Pradesh, via Lamkhaga pass, arrived in Kolkata on Monday.
The trekkers who were found dead on Tuesday had gone on an expedition to cross the Kanakata pass, which has an elevation of 14,708ft.
While Sagar, Sarit and Chandra Sekhar were from Howrah’s Bagnan, Preetam was from Nadia’s Ranaghat. Sadhan was from Thakurpukur.
Sadhan, a retired state government employee, had been into trekking for the last 11 years, his daughter Samarpita said.
He had gone on trekking trips to Sandakphu in Darjeeling, Hemkund Sahib in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district and Goechala in Sikkim.
“I had accompanied my father on trekking trips. Two of the places where we went together were the Valley of Flowers and Pindari-Kafni in Uttarakhand,” said Samarpita.
The group had left Kolkata on October 10 and were to return on October 24. “I had last spoken to my father on October 11,” said Samarpita.
“The team was approaching the Kanakata pass when the weather became adverse. They were coming down when they met with the accident,” said Vineet Kumar, district magistrate of Bageshwar.
“We had built a temporary helipad on the route. Our rescue team carried the bodies for 2km, till the helipad, from where choppers brought down the bodies to the valley,” he said.
Samarpita said the bodies would be taken to Delhi, from where they would be flown to Kolkata.
An official of the Bengal government said the bodies would be brought to Kolkata on two morning flights on Thursday.
“We have sent freezer vans to Uttarakhand from the resident commissioner’s office in Delhi to carry the bodies,” the official said.
