Shimla, Aug 16: The district administration today engaged a dog squad in the search operation to locate the body of missing victims, but failed to find any body. Earth-moving machine was engaged at two places, one near the road side where HRTC bus HP63-5840 was trapped under debris, another at 1,000 metre downside from the road, where anther HRTC bus HP73-4423 was trapped under the debris.In the search operation no body was recovered from the site. Mandi SP Ashok Kumar said, “We engaged dog squad but no success was achieved in locating the bodies of the missing victims.”The search operation was hampered for one hour as the machine ran out of diesel.
Additional District Magistrate Mandi Rajiv Kumar said that out of 46, 32 bodies have been identified. He said after conducting the postmortem of bodies, these have been handed over to their families for last rites. As a safety measure, Deputy Commissioner Mandi has diverted traffic between Mandi and Kullu via Mandi-Kataula-Bajaura-Kullu road. He advised people to refrain from going ahead toward to Manali from Mandi on the Chandigarh-Manali NH21 for the next couple of days because the road stretch between Pandoh to Aut tunnel is prone to landslide. A number of such incidents have been reported during the past one month in which some people have sustained injuries.
Source Tribune India