A landslide-hit truck has been found in a roadside river after days of digging under piled debris on the opposite side of the highway, raising questions whether media-hyped amateur “experts” had misled rescue officials and the distraught family of the truck driver.

The fiasco at Shirur village in Karnataka’s Uttara Kannada district underlines the menace of self-styled “rescue experts” spreading confusion at disaster sites, as witnessed last year when an under-construction mountain tunnel collapsed in Uttarakhand and trapped 41 workers for 17 days.

A landslide had on July 16 morning swept portions of NH66 into the Gangavalli river along with a riverside eatery, two oil tankers, and a Bharat Benz lorry. It also left a huge mound of mud and rock on the hillside, that is, the other side of the highway, away from the riverbank.

Six bodies and the two tankers were found in the river or its banks and a seventh body buried under the debris. But Arjun, the Keralite driver of the timber-loaded Bharat Benz, and two local people remained missing along with the lorry.

On Thursday — the 10th day after the landslide — a magnetometer and drones confirmed that the lorry was 15 metres under the river. Arjun and the other two remain missing.

The rescue operation had gained much publicity with the Kerala government joining Karnataka’s efforts. It now appears that both governments had been led astray by groups of amateur “experts” from Kerala who arrived on their own and volunteered help, while receiving wide media coverage.

One of the “experts” had introduced himself as Thiruvananthapuram native Ranjith Israel. The Malayalam media portrayed him as a veteran of tricky rescue missions in Kerala and Uttarakhand, apparently taking him at his word.

Several other groups of “experts” too had turned up from Kerala and begun advising the rescuers on the strength of having purportedly rescued large numbers of people during the 2018 floods.

On Thursday, several media outlets acknowledged their folly.

District officials had wanted to search for Arjun and his lorry in the Gangavalli. But the so-called “experts” allegedly exerted pressure on the authorities, claiming the truck was under the hillock of mud.

They accused the Karnataka authorities of laxity, a charge that seemed to gain credence from the local authorities’ tardy efforts until the Kerala government intervened.

Karnataka revenue minister Krishna Byre Gowda had on Wednesday given the first indications that the truck might be “in the water”. But Ranjith told a channel that he still believed the vehicle was on the hillside.

“A man with no proven expertise in handling such situations had very smartly managed to mislead the media and Arjun’s family members,” Vinu V. John, associate editor of the popular Malayalam channel, Asianet News, acknowledged on Thursday.

“We shouldn’t have given such opportunities (media space) to such people. Precious time was lost because of such people.”

Arun Kumar, one of the editors of the Reporter news channel, too admitted the mistake.

“(For) the first five days the work was focused on the hillside assuming that the truck was under the collapsed hillock. (District) officials had even then said that it was misleading information,” he said.

The Kerala state Congress has sought an apology from Kumar for relying on the opinion of “self-declared” experts like Ranjith. “You should apologise to Arjun’s family for wasting precious time and your viewers for misleading them,” the party said.

“Without basic fact-checking, you brought in various ‘self-declared’ experts who don’t even know the basics of Newton’s three laws of motion.”

Arjun’s family had said his phone had rung till 8am on July 19. The truck’s owner, claiming to have located the onboard GPS signals, said at the time that the vehicle was under the mound of mud.

This despite a few local people saying they had seen the Bharat Benz parked near the eatery, an indication that it was perhaps swept into the river.

But the “rescuers” including Ranjith insisted that the vehicle had been parked on the opposite side of the road.

All the amateur “rescuers” were on Thursday ordered out of the area.

Last year, the delay in rescuing the workers trapped in the Uttarkashi tunnel was blamed partly on confusing and contradictory advice from the many private experts, including some from abroad, who had turned up on their own.