Himachal: Search for bodies called off

The search for the four bodies in the Kangla Jot Glacier in Himachal Pradesh was called off due to bad weather. The four persons had gone missing 22 years ago while trekking in the Himalayas.

B K Verma, deputy commissioner, Lahaul district, was supervising the operation. He told rediff.com on phone from Keylong that the 22-member retrieval team had recovered the body of a woman, Swedish national Margot Lydia Aulikki Ryyannen, before calling off the mission.

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The team had left for the glacier on September 10. "It spotted the body on September 13 and brought it to the base camp. It was sent to the Indira Gandhi Medical College in Shimla on September 16 for post-mortem. DNA tests would be also carried out to confirm the identity of the woman," Verma said.

"A Gurgaon-based mountaineering team had reported sighting of four bodies, at a height of over 18,000 feet. But we recovered just one. The other three were on an adjacent hill, on which there was a landslide last week. It is impossible to search under the debris," Verma said.

After discussing the situation with other district officials and members of the retrieval team, it was decided to call off the mission.

It is already snowing in the upper reaches of Himachal Pradesh. Lahual and Spiti Valley would soon be cut off from rest of the country for the next four to five months thus ruling out a second mission.