By Raju Vernekar
Mumbai, April 12:
At least two tourists, including a woman, died and many others were injured when some cable cars in a ropeway collided with each other at Trikut hills close to Baidyanath Temple in Deoghar district of Jharkhand, the North Indian state, on Sunday evening.
While the woman succumbed to her injuries in the Sadar Hospital after the accident, another person reportedly died before dusk on Monday evening as he fell off the IAF helicopter when being airlifted.
32 persons were rescued from 12 cars on Monday while at least 15 others remain stranded mid-air as the joint rescue operation by the Indian Air Force (IAF), Army, Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), and the district administration was stopped after dusk due to poor visibility on Monday evening. All tourists are safe. The food was provided to the trolleys as much as possible, though not to all trolleys, due to difficulties, ITBP PRO Vivek Pandey said.
The IAF received a request in the night on April 10, Sunday for the rescue of the stranded tourists. Acting on the request, the IAF deployed one Mi-17 and one Mi-17 V5 helicopter early in the morning on Monday. The IAF contingent also had a component of IAF Garud Commandos for the conduct of the operations. A recce was conducted by one of the helicopters in the morning and operations began with the district administration, NDRF, and other agencies, Defence PRO Wing Commander Ratnakar Singh said.
The names of the injured given by the Jharkhand Government were: Govind Bhokta, (Giridih, Jharkhand), Bhupendra Burman (Kokrajhar, Assam), Deepika Burman(Kokrajhar, Assam), an unidentified girl child, Rupa Kumari(9), (Karmatand, Jamtara, Jharkhand), Soni Devi (Tir Nagar, UP), Raman Kumar Srivastava, (Darbhanga, Bihar), Sudha Rani Raman Kumar Srivastava ((Darbhanga, Bihar), Khusbu Rani Ramankumar Srivastava ((Darbhanga, Bihar).
Around 766-metres long Trikut Ropeway, is stated to be the highest vertical ropeway with a maximum lens angle of 44 degrees. The Trikut hill is 392-meter high. There are 25 cabins in the ropeway, with each cabin having a capacity of carrying four passengers.
