Falling rocks along Char Dham route kill 3 pilgrims, injure 12: Officials

Uttarakhand’s emergency operation centre has received confirmation of death of 206 pilgrims during the Char Dham pilgrimage

Mussoorie: Three pilgrims have died and a dozen received injuries due to falling rocks and boulders on the Sonprayag-Kedarnath route, disaster management officials in Uttarakhand said on Thursday.

One pilgrim was killed and five injured when rocks fell on a vehicle near Munkatiya near Sonprayaag. (ANI)

At Kedarnath, one person was killed and three injured when rocks fell on pilgrims between Sonprayag and Gaurikund while they were returning from Kedarnath shrine in Rudraprayag district on Thursday, the officials said.

The deceased was identified as Jayanti Lal (50) from Rajasthan’s Banswada. The three injured are Mayuri (30) from Ahmedabad, Awan Singh (59) from Haryana’s Surhati and Vikas (24) from Nepal.

Rudraprayag district disaster management official Nandan Singh Rajwar said the state disaster response force (SDRF) team rushed the injured to the government health centre at Sonprayag where they are undergoing treatment.

In a similar incident on Wednesday, one pilgrim was killed and five injured when rocks fell on a vehicle near Munkatiya near Sonprayaag. The victims were on their way back from the Kedarnath shrine and were travelling from Gaurikund to Sonprayag when the incident took place. The deceased has been identified as Pushpa (62), a resident of Kaasti in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar.

The injured, who were trapped inside the vehicle, were pulled out by the disaster response team by cutting the twisted metal and rushed to the Sonprayag government health centre.

Also on Wednesday, a 29-year-old man from Uttar Pradesh died after a boulder crashed on fell on the vehicle he was travelling in. The victim, identified as Pradeep Agarwal, was returning from the Badrinath shrine.

There were other of falling boulders elsewhere including one in Chamoli district’s Baazpur where a boulder rolled down the mountain slope and crashed a vehicle. The injured man was admitted to the district hospital in Gopeshwar, where he is undergoing treatment.

The state emergency operation centre in Dehradun on Thursday morning said the total deaths on the Char Dham route has reached 206 after one more person died on way to Hemkund Sahib and another on the Badrinath shrine route.

Rangnath Pandey district forest officer DFO Gangotri national wildlife park said the number of trekkers was down to 56 on Wednesday as the monsoon rains pick up.

The Gaumukh Yatra will pick up again after the monsoon rains, the official said.

The IMD, Uttarakhand on Wednesday announced the arrival of the monsoon in the hill state.

According to the IMD’s Dehradun centre at 8:30am, the state received 27.6 mm of rainfall in the last 24 hours against a normal of 8.6 mm. The IMD has predicted heavy to very heavy rainfall at isolated places in the state.