The bodies of an Indian man and his teenage daughter, who visited Nepal as tourists and had gone missing since last month, were recovered from a mountain area near a monastery on Sunday, police said.
The Armed Police Force (APF) recovered the bodies of Jignesh Kumar Lallubhai Patel, 52, and his daughter Priyadarshani (17), both residents of Kadod in Bardoli taluka of Surat, Gujarat, from near Maleripa Monastery at Disyang in Manang district, AFP deputy spokesperson Shailendra Thapa said.
The duo had left Gyalsen Hotel at Disyang on October 20, informing the hotel staff that they were going to the Maleripa Monastery.
When they failed to return, the hotel staff informed the Nepal Mountain Rescue Training School in Manang and sought assistance in locating them. As the initial search operations by the training school did not yield results, a trained mountain rescue team led by DSP Hira Bahadur GC was dispatched with rescue equipment.
The team found the bodies buried under snow about 100 metres above the monastery. It appears the tourists visited the monastery and then moved further uphill for a better view before the incident occurred, police said. A few days ago, Patel’s wife contacted the Surat district police and the State Emergency Operation Centre at Gandhinagar, seeking help to locate her husband and daughter. Jagruti, wife of Jignesh Patel, mentioned in her complaint to Kadod outpost of Bardoli police that her husband and daughter left after October 15 and reached Nepal for mountaineering. According to her, she had her last conversation with her husband on October 21. Jignesh told her that they had reached the base camp of the Annapurna Mountains in the Manang district of Nepal and would return to the base camp by October 30, according to Bardoli police sources.
