Uttarkashi avalanche: Body of mountaineer recovered after a year; death toll stands at 28

The NIM team has recovered one of the two mountaineers who went missing in the accident last year. The body was airlifted to Harshil today and sent for post-mortem at Uttarkashi district hospital. The total death toll in the accident stands at 28.

Uttarkashi:Body of a mountaineer, who went missing a year ago following an avalanche at Draupadi ka Danda-2 peak in Uttarakhand's Uttarkashi district, was recovered by a team of Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM) yesterday, taking the total death toll to 28.

On October 4, 2022, a group of 32 trainees and two instructors of NIM were hit by the avalanche. A total of 27 people were reported to be dead and two went missing. The missing persons were Navy sailor Vinay Panwar from Uttarakhand's Dehradun and lieutenant colonel Deepak Vashisht, a doctor at an Army hospital from Uttar Pradesh's Lucknow. The body that has been recovered has been identified as Panwar.

Panwar's body has been taken to the district hospital in Uttarkashi for post-mortem while search is on for the remaining one mountaineer.

The NIM had launched a campaign with advanced technology to search for the two missing trainee mountaineers. The campaign was led by principal of NIM, colonel Anshuman Bhadauria.

Vice Principal major Deval Vajpayee said that the body of one of the two missing mountaineers was recovered by a team of NIM on October 4. The body was brought to NIM Base Camp in Dokrani Bamak from where it was airlifted by an army helicopter to Harshil today. After landing in Harshil, it was brought to Uttarkashi by a vehicle. The postmortem is being done in the district hospital in Uttarkashi, Vajpayee said.

The death of the mountaineers had descended a pall of gloom in the state.