A coordinated rescue and relief operation entered its third consecutive day on Saturday in a remote village of Jammu and Kashmir’s Kishtwar district, where 60 people were killed and over 100 others injured, officials said.
Union Minister Jitendra Singh, along with Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police (DGP) Nalin Prabhat, visited the devastated village late Friday night and reviewed the ongoing efforts being carried out by the police, Army, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), Border Roads Organisation (BRO), civil administration, and local volunteers in the high-altitude terrain.
So far, 46 bodies have been identified and handed over to their families after completion of legal formalities. Meanwhile, 75 people have been reported missing by their relatives, though locals and eyewitnesses claim that hundreds may have been swept away by flash floods and buried under boulders, logs, and rubble.
Among the deceased were two personnel of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and a Special Police Officer (SPO), officials said.
The disaster struck Chisoti — the last motorable village en route to the Machail Mata temple — at around 12:25 pm on August 14. It flattened a makeshift market, a langar (community kitchen) site for the yatra, and a security outpost.
At least 16 residential houses and government buildings, three temples, four water mills, a 30-metre bridge, and more than a dozen vehicles were also damaged in the flash floods.
The annual Machail Mata Yatra, which began on July 25 and was scheduled to conclude on September 5, remained suspended for the third consecutive day on Saturday. The 8.5-km trek to the 9,500-foot-high shrine starts from Chisoti, located about 90 km from Kishtwar town.
Rescue efforts were further intensified with nearly a dozen earth-movers deployed by the civil administration, along with specialised equipment and dog squads from the NDRF.
“After a long, tedious uphill drive, I managed to reach the site of the cloudburst disaster in Kishtwar… very late, around midnight,” Union Minister Jitendra Singh said in a social media post after his visit.
He was accompanied by the DGP and received a detailed briefing on the ongoing rescue and relief operations. (Agencies)
