Couple feared missing in HP; tour operator blames weather

BENGALURU: Susmita Chatterjee, 29, and her husband Pratim Rakshit, 29, both engineers employed as consultants with an MNC, are feared to have gone missing in Himachal Pradesh, where they had gone on a trip. They were supposed to return to Bengaluru on Monday.

Susmita, an instrumentation engineer and Pratim, an automobile engineer, have been married for 19 months and live in Vibhuthipura, Bengaluru. According to Susmita’s father Sourav Kumar Chatterjee, the couple had gone on a tour through Deyor Camp, a travel operator based in Gurugram. “I last spoke to them on Friday morning. They were supposed to return to Manali on Saturday, arrive in Delhi on Sunday and reach Bengaluru today (Monday). But we’ve been unable to contact them since Friday and are not getting convincing answers from the operator,” Sourav told TOI from Mumbai.

‘40 people have taken shelter in village’

Himanshu Agarwal of Deyor Camp, however, allayed fears and said about 40 people are in a village without mobile network and their safety has not been compromised.

“They were supposed to return to Manali on Saturday, but the authorities closed Rohtang Pass due to bad weather. It has been snowing and raining. The last we heard was that all the 40 people who are part of our group have taken shelter in a village 12km from Rohtang Pass and are safe,” he said.

This is the second such incident of Bengaluru residents going missing in Himachal Pradesh in recent past. Last month, Sathyanarayan Venkatachari, a software engineer went missing in the northern state where he had gone trekking. Sathyanarayan has still not been found, a family friend said.