CA student falls to death from high-rise building in Kasba
A female Chartered Accountancy (CA) student named Tamanna Hiraowat (19), fell to her death from the roof of a multi-storey building in Kasba.
Frantic search for the bodies of victims of landslide in Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh on the intervening night of Saturday and Sunday last continued on Wednesday as well.
Although the army team has gone back, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Police, Home Guards and locals continued with the search operation, hoping that some more bodies may have been buried deep in the debris.
“No more bodies have, however, been retrieved after the initial 46,” said the District Disaster Management unit in Mandi.
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The massive landslide had swept away two state run buses, with initial estimates of around 50 casualties. 46 bodies, a number of them mutilated, were retrieved from the debris in the search operation by different agencies till late night on Sunday. Forty-five of them have been identified.
The patch of debris was so big that it swept away 150 metres of the stretch of National Highway between Mandi and Jogindernagar.
Sources said so far all the bodies were recovered from the area where the mangled buses were found. “The cops are now searching the other areas in the debris to rule out the possibility of more victims,” said sources, adding the authorities were actually groping in the dark on the actual number of casualties as no eye witness is left in the Chamba- Manali bus—which was carrying over 47 passengers as per initial estimates- to reveal the real figure. The administration on 14 August had got the two villages around the sliding hill vacated for safety.
According to locals, at Kotrupi, there had been similar landslides in August 1977 and then in August 1997, for the hillside here is too fragile to be intact in rains.
Earlier, however, it blocked the road and there were no casualties.
Sources said keeping in view this, a geology expert has been called from Chandigarh to study the reasons of periodic landslide and suggest ways to construct the road in a way as to avoid it.
Meanwhile, Additional Chief Secretary, Revenue, Tarun Shridhar visited the spot of landslide during the day to take stock of the situation.
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