Mutilated body found on Churdhar peak in Himachal, believed to be of missing Haryana youth

The mutilated body of a youth was found in a deep snow-covered gorge along the Churdhar Trek in Himachal Pradesh’s Sirmaur district, officials said on Tuesday.

A team of local volunteers that spotted the body on Monday evening believe it to be that of Akshay Sahani (28), a resident of Panchkula in Haryana, who went missing on February 26, while trekking to the Churdhar peak on the occasion of Mahashivratri.

According to the volunteers from the Nohradhar area, the body was found near the statue of Lord Shiva, close to the last rest point on the trek.

No other trekker has been reported missing in the Churdhar region in recent months, they said.

Churdhar peak is one of the highest in the Shivalik ranges standing at an altitude of 11,965 feet located in Sirmaur district.

SDM Sangrah Sunil Kayath said that the administration cannot confirm the identity of the body to be of the missing tourist from Haryana.

However, his parents have been informed and they are on their way to Sangrah to identify the body, he said.

The body is being brought to Sangrah where the postmortem examination and other scientific tests would be conducted to ascertain the identity and cause of death, he added.

Upon receiving information about the man’s disappearance, on February 27 the district administration launched a search operation involving a five-member State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and police personnel led by an SHO from the Nohradhar police station.

However, extreme weather conditions hampered the search multiple times and the team ultimately failed to trace the missing youth.

On March 2, a team of professional trackers from the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Mountaineering and Allied Sports, Manali, was roped in, but they too were unsuccessful due to the extreme weather.

On Sunday, mountaineer Baljeet Kaur, who scaled the Mount Everest initiated a search in the Churdhar valley, but it was ultimately a group of volunteers from Nohradhar village and surrounding area who succeeded in locating the dead body in a deep snowy gorge.