Families of 11 people who have been missing since a series of cloudbursts hit Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi district on June 30 are left clinging to faint hope. Of the 11 missing from the Deji village in the Thunag sub-division, five are children, three women, and a man who belonged to two families.
The missing include Gokul Chand, 61, his wife Dulma Devi, 55, their daughter-in-law Bhuvneshwari Devi, 29, and two grandchildren — Suryansh, 9, and Urvanshi, 3. Another family lost four members: Kanta Devi, 32, and her three daughters — Ekta, 10, Bhivanshi, 5, and three-year-old Khushi. The remaining two missing individuals have been identified as Sohan Lal, 51, a government teacher, and a woman, whose identity is yet to be established.
Vir Bahadur, eldest son of Chand, said, “It has been eight days since my parents, my younger brother’s wife, and their two children were washed away. We’re holding on to hopeless hope. My parents used to live with my younger brother Mukesh Kumar’s family. Thankfully, he wasn’t home that night. He drives a private vehicle and was away on a booking, which saved his life”.
“All of us, along with rescue teams, have been searching desperately for any trace of our loved ones, but so far, there’s been no success. My nephew Suryansh was studying in Class 4 at a local government school,” Bahadur said.
Bahadur added that his younger brother, Mukesh Kumar, had a house situated at a lower elevation than his own, and it was struck by a giant boulder that came with the gushing water.
While he continues his efforts to trace his missing family members, Hem Singh, father of Kanta Devi has lost all hope. “What can we do in this situation? What had to happen was bound to happen,” he said.
“My son-in-law, Inder Singh, a tailor, was living in rented accommodation in Dejji with his wife Kanta and their three daughters. By chance, on June 30, Inder had gone to his village of Mundala, near Nachan in Mandi district. That night, the tragedy struck. We haven’t found a single clue about Kanta or the girls.”
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Ekta was studying in Class 6, Bhivanshi was in LKG, and the youngest, Khushi, attended the local Anganwadi centre.
An officer of the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) said, “So far, 27 people have been missing in the Mandi district since the multiple cloudbursts struck on June 30. Out of 27, 11 people were washed away in Deji. We have widened the area of our search operation. We are making sincere efforts to trace missing people.”
Monika Devi, Pradhan, Gram Panchayat, Pakhreer, said, “Rescue teams are making desperate efforts to trace the missing, but chances are very slim. Today, government officials, including those from the Revenue Department, visited the affected families”.
“Among all villages in Mandi district, Dejji has suffered the worst in terms of human loss. Sohan Lal, the government teacher who is missing, was from the Balh area and had been living in a rented accommodation here due to his posting. Cloudbursts first struck Deji.”
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She said that although life is turning to normalcy, connectivity through roads, which were damaged in the cloudbursts, is yet to be fully restored. The mobile signal networking is also a challenge in the area.
