Bodies of dead trekkers brought back to Bengaluru, handed over to families

BENGALURU: The bodies of the nine trekkers who were killed after they got trapped due to bad weather on the Sahastra Tal route in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi, were flown in to Bengaluru on Friday.

Early on Friday morning, the bodies of Padmini Hegde, Venkatesh Prasad K and Asha Sudhakar arrived by a IndiGo flight from Delhi. Another IndoGo flight brought the bodies of Padmanabh Kundapur, Sindhu Vakelam, Sujatha Mungurawadi and Vinayak Mungurawadi. The bodies of Chitra Praneeth and Anitha Rangappa arrived from Delhi later in the afternoon.

Revenue Minister Krishna Byregowda was at the airport to receive the bodies. “The bodies were handed over to the families with full state honours along with the related documents”, he said.

In the team of 22 trekkers, 18 belonged to Karnataka, one hailed from Maharashtra and three of them were local guides. Those who were rescued include Sowmya Kenale, Smrithi Dolas, Sheena Lakshmi, S Shiva Jyothi, Anil Jamathige Arunachal Bhat, Bharat Bommanagoudar, Madhu Kiran Reddy, Jayaprakash B S, S Sudhakar, Vinayak M K, Vivek Sridhar, Naveen A and Rithika Jindal.