Five persons were killed and one went missing in an instance of landslide in Tehri district’s Jakhnyali village in the wee hours of Thursday.
Tehri District Magistrate Yugal Kishore Pant said, “Five bodies have been recovered and one is missing. The search operations are going on.”
The dead include two children, and two elderly women. Mr. Pant said, “Twelve houses were damaged in the landslide, which includes five houses that got completely damaged.”
The incident occurred in the Jakhnyali village, which is around 70 km from the Tehri district headquarters, Mr. Pant said.
He added that teams including the district police, fire brigade, and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) were undertaking the search and rescue operations.
Uttarkashi landslide
Fresh instance of a landslide was reported in Dunda Tehsil in Uttarkashi district, on Thursday where a house was buried in the slide.
The Gangotri and Yamunotri National Highways were blocked on Thursday. However, the pilgrimage to the shrines of Gangotri and Yamunotri continued as pilgrims travelled on foot.
Uttarkashi District Magistrate C. Ravishankar said, “The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and the Public Works Department (PWD) are continuously working on the sites where landslips have resulted in blocked roads.”
Mr. Ravishankar said that though the pilgrimage continued, the number of pilgrims was meagre. “Only 60 pilgrims visited Yamunotri, on Wednesday, and only 30 visited Gangotri. Today [On Thursday] too numbers were almost the same,” he said.
