Bodies of 5 pilgrims recovered from Char Dham Highway landslide site

The landslide hit a 150-metre stretch of the Kedarnath highway in Uttarakhand’s Rudraprayag district between Sonprayag and Munkatiya on Monday evening

Rescuers recovered the bodies of four more pilgrims as the search and rescue operation resumed at the site of the landslide on the Kedarnath highway in Uttarakhand’s Rudraprayag district on Tuesday morning, taking the toll from the incident to five.

The rescue operation resumed on Tuesday morning. (HT PHOTO)

The landslide hit a 150-metre stretch of highway between Sonprayag and Munkatiya on Monday evening. Officials said some more people may still be buried under the debris

District disaster management officer Nandan Singh Rajwar identified those dead as Gopal, 50, Durgabai Khapar, 50, Samanbai, 50, from Madhya Pradesh, Nepal’s Titli Devi, 70, Bharat Bhai, 52, a resident of Gujarat’s Surat. He added the injured Jeevach Tiwari, 60, from Nepal, Manpreet Singh, 30, from West Bengal, and Chhagan Lal, 45, of Madhya Pradesh were undergoing treatment.

Continuous falling of boulders and heavy rainfall disrupted the rescue operations. “For the safety of the rescuers, the search and rescue operation was stopped in the [Monday] evening and resumed around 6.30 am,” he said.

Chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, who offered his condolences to the families of those killed, said rescuers were immediately dispatched to the scene. “The injured were immediately sent to Sonprayag through ambulance for treatment.”