Family-led search team fails to trace missing mountaineer, returns

GUWAHATI: A search team, made up of family members and others, returned from a mountain near the India-China border in Arunachal Pradesh after failing to trace missing Everester Tapi Mra and his assistant Niku Dao. The two were reported missing in mid-August after they had embarked on scaling the Mount Kyarisatam, the state’s highest mountain peak located at an altitude of 6,890 metres.

On October 7, a 15-member team of local mountaineers, family members and porters had left for the site weeks after the authorities called off a ground search by the Army mid-way due to inclement weather conditions. The second search team recovered mountaineering equipment and other belongings from a place 300-400 metres beyond Camp-2 but could not trace Mra and Dao, dead or alive. The team said the operation had to be concluded due to very bad weather.

It said the snowcovered mountain diminished the chance of finding the footprints or any other clues. “We found the entire area covered with snow and the weather was very bad beyond Camp 2,” mountaineer Taru Hai, a member of the team, told local journalists. He was also a part of the first search operation conducted by the Army in September.

He said the authorities had then allegedly did not allow the team to go beyond Camp 2. Earlier, the family of Mra had lamented that he was not given due respect by the state government, as evident from its “poorly-planned” search and rescue operation. “He (Mra) had set out for the mountain as part of his mission to promote mountaineering in the state,” his sister Yatok Mra Nilo had told journalists.