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Anxiety grows as prominent Mumbai doctor-mountaineer and group of 61 go missing
Prominent Mumbai doctor-mountaineer Milind Chitley and 60 others remain untraceable after floods hit the Nepal-Tibet route, leaving families seeking updates
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Dr Milind P Chitley, the Andheri-based family physician, prominent mountaineer and co-founder of Hills & Trails – a trekking agency – is among five doctors missing from Mumbai, including his wife Megha, who is a pathologist. The five doctors are part of 61 Indian travellers to Kailash Mansarovar that Chitley was leading when the group was reported missing after a flash flood hit the Tibet side of the customs and immigration point in Nepal.
The group of trekkers is from Mumbai, Pune and other states.
Kalyan-based Swanand Subhedar’s senior citizen father Sunil Sudarshan Subhedar is part of Chitley’s group. An anxious Swanand told HT that he has lost all contact with his father since Wednesday evening. “His phone is unreachable. I have been trying to contact the authorities for an update since last night but I still haven’t been able to locate my father,” he said.
Deep Dive
While the Nepalese authorities have launched a multi-agency search and rescue operation to locate survivors and provide emergency relief, as the death toll has surpassed hundreds, with over 1,300 still reported missing, families and friends of the doctors and others are eagerly awaiting updates.
Kin, colleagues helpless
Among the missing are Dr Anand Deshpande, who heads the blood bank of Hinduja Hospital, and his wife Dr Gayatri Deshpande, head of the department of gynaecology and obstetrics at Nanavati hospital.
A senior officer from the hospital said, “We are in touch with their daughter who is in Bengaluru, but have yet to get any information about her parents.” A spokesperson for the hospital said, “We have reached out to the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu and received a list of rescued people, in which Dr Gayatri’s name does figure. Officers from Max Hospitals (which manages Nanavati hospital) in Kathmandu are also trying to look for details.”
Also missing is former health minister Dr Deepak Sawant’s wife Anita’s dentist Dr Meenakshi Ramani, and her relatives. “Dr Meenakshi’s husband -- Dr Sanjay Ramani -- is in a state of trauma,” said Sawant. “I have made several calls to helpline numbers over the last few hours. I do not know how to get in touch with my wife and the others missing or get any information about their safety,” said Ramani.
Rahul Desai, whose father-in-law Avanish Merchant was part of the group accompanying Chitley, said they had been trying to get some information about his father-in-law by contacting various sources – from authorities in Nepal to the Ministry of External Affairs. “We have provided them with all the information about him,” he said.
Merchant’s daughter, who refused to disclose her name, said they were “very positive” about locating her father, another family from their building, and members of two other families from Vile Parle who were travelling with Hills & Trails.
“Maybe they have just been unable to reach out to us,” she said. “They were not on a trekking trip but on a pilgrimage visit to Kailash Mansarovar.”
The group led by Dr Chitley included tourists from other states as well, such as 33-year-old Arushi Gupta from Hyderabad, whose last known location was the Rasuwa Customs office along the Nepal-Tibet border. Gupta’s uncle Subir Jha, founder of a boutique wealth management and financial planning firm, has formed a WhatsApp group comprising family members of those missing to help locate them.
Similarly, Sree Veerendra Kumar from Chennai has sought assistance from the union government in tracing Venkataram Annamdevara and Anagha Annamdevara, who were travelling with the group.
“The group was scheduled to travel through the flood-affected corridor on 26 August...Mr Venkataram Annamdevara last spoke to his daughter at approximately 7am, informing her that they were starting their onward journey. Since then, our family has been unable to establish contact with either of them,” Kumar posted on X.
Avid trekker who knew the terrain
Chitley, 64, who travelled with his wife, also a doctor, has decades of experience trekking in the Himalayas, having started mountaineering in 1983-84 while still a student of medicine at Grant Medical College, and eventually completing the basic and advanced courses at the Mountaineering Institute of Darjeeling.
He was selected as the climbing doctor for the First Indian Civilian Expedition to Kanchenjunga, an 8,000-metre peak, in 1988. Through that expedition, he rescued climbers suffering from serious high-altitude medical issues, including pulmonary edema and hypothermia, said his anxious friends, waiting to hear from him. He also treated cases of frostbite and helped bring the affected climbers back to Mumbai for further treatment, said one of his friends.
He is in fact one of the few doctors in the country experienced in treating high-altitude illnesses, blending mountaineering with emergency medical care in the Himalayas – which he encapsulated in books on first aid and rescue. In fact, when he started conducting first-aid camps for mountaineers between 1990 and ’91, several mountaineering organisations invited him to conduct similar camps and programmes for them, which Chitley did without charging money.
He was later awarded the Girimitra Mountaineer Award – a prestigious national award in the mountaineering fraternity – in 2005. The veteran of the Himalayas has visited Nepal over 18 times to lead numerous complex trekking and climbing groups.
Pradnya Mokashi, Dr Chitley’s neighbour in Andheri East, said the doctor had been to Nepal more than 17 times and knew the terrain well.
“The Chitaleys left on August 23 for a 14-day trek. But we have been unable to get in touch with any person from the group since Wednesday,” she said. Mokashi, a senior citizen, said she had travelled with Dr Chitaley to Nepal last year for a fortnight, and appreciated the arrangements on the trip. “Last year too, there was a flash flood which washed away the Friendship Bridge on the Rasuwagadhi River. We had to take a longer route to reach the campsite,” she recalled.
Ecologist and mountaineer Anand Pendharkar, founder of Sprouts, an NGO working in the ecology sector, who has known Chitley for many years, said, “He is a skilled mountaineer who has been leading trekking trips on the difficult Kailash Mansarovar route for many years. We are anxiously awaiting news of his group.”
Dr Sameer Kapadia, a radiologist based in south Mumbai, and Chitley’s batchmate, said: “We are hoping for the best. As the communication system in the area is poor right now, we are hoping to establish contact with him eventually.”
