Five persons, including a minor, were killed on Thursday after their vehicle plunged into a gorge near Dhaila village on the Ratighat bypass in Uttarakhand’s Nainital district, police said.
Local police personnel, along with teams of the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), retrieved the bodies from the gorge and sent them to a government hospital for postmortem.
Police identified the deceased as Bhupendra Singh Chuphal (48), his wife Seema Kaira Chuphal (45), his son Ravi (12), and Vasu Chuphal (19), all residents of Khatima in Udham Singh Nagar district. The driver was identified as Anuj Mishra (34), a resident of Alam Nagar in Lucknow.
According to the preliminary investigation, the family was heading to Kainchi Dham when they met with the accident, Nainital superintendent of police (crime) Jagdish Chandra said.
“The driver allegedly lost control of the vehicle, following which it fell nearly 250 metres into a gorge. The impact was so severe that the vehicle was completely mangled,” Chandra said.
“The exact cause of the accident is yet to be ascertained. A detailed and technical investigation into the incident will be conducted,” he added.