The bodies of five trekkers from Bengal who died on a trekking expedition in Bageshwar district of Uttarakhand arrived in Kolkata on Thursday.
The bodies of Sagar Dey, 27, Sarit Sekhar Das, 37, and Chandra Sekhar Das, 32, all from Howrah district’s Bagnan, came on one flight. The bodies of Sadhan Basak, 63, and Preetam Roy, 27, were brought on another flight. Sadhan was from Thakurpukur on the south-western fringes of Kolkata and Preetam was from Ranaghat in Nadia district.
The five were part of a team that had gone on an expedition to cross the Kanakata pass, which has an elevation of 14,708ft, in the Sunderdhunga region of Bageshwar district.
The group had left Kolkata on October 10 and were to return on October 24.
“The team was approaching the Kanakata pass when the weather became adverse. They were coming down when they met with the accident,” Vineet Kumar, district magistrate of Bageshwar, had said on Tuesday.
“The team was approaching the Kanakata pass when the weather became adverse. They were coming down when they met with the accident,” Vineet Kumar, district magistrate of Bageshwar, had said on Tuesday.
Sadhan’s daughters Samarpita and Srijita were present at the airport to receive their father’s body. Samarpita had gone on a trekking expedition in Leh when his father was trekking in Uttarakhand.
“I got the news that he was missing when we were returning home,” said Samarpita, who had accompanied his father, a retired state government employee, on some trekking trips.
Two of the places where they went together were the Valley of Flowers and Pindari-Kafni in Uttarakhand.
Samarpita said his father had gone on several trekking expeditions with Sarit and Sagar.
Sadhan had picked up interest in trekking from Samarpita, who had attended a rock-climbing course in school. “However, I learnt everything about mountains from him,” she said.
Family members of the other victims, too, were at the airport. Among them was Preetam’s uncle, Atanu Mondal. Preetam, she said, was a final-year MBBS student at the Behrampore Medical College and Hospital.
“His teachers at the medical college had told him that he would not get any leave in the coming days as the schedule of a final-year student is rigorous. So he took this leave to go on vacation,” Mondal said.
The local guide from Uttarakhand who had accompanied the group is still missing, said Samarpita.
Ministers Sujit Bose, Ujjwal Debnath and Pulak Roy were present at the Kolkata airport to help the families of the deceased.
The state government had hired an agency that transported the bodies home.