Snow impedes efforts to trace BRO worker in HP

Mandi, February 6

Inclement weather hampered search and rescue operation for a missing labourer, Passang Chhering Lama (27), a native of Nepal, near Chika on the Darcha-Shinkula road in tribal Lahaul and Spiti district of Himachal today.

It kept snowing throughout the day near Chika and its nearby areas. As a result, teams of Border Roads Organisation and Lahaul-Spiti District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) could not conduct the rescue operation to locate the missing worker, said officials.

An avalanche had hit the three labourers near Chika yesterday when they were clearing snow on the road using a JCB machine.

Soon after the incident, a BRO team started a search and rescue operation to locate the missing persons trapped under heaps of snow. But it was too late and the BRO team retrieved two bodies of labourers yesterday. The deceased were identified as Rakesh Kumar, a native of Chamba district, and Ram Budha (19), a native of Nepal.