Lucknow: Floods triggered by rain swept away a car with five occupants into the Khoh river in Pauri Garhwal area of Uttarakhand.
The incident took place around 9 pm on the Kotdwar-Pauri road when the five persons from Bijnor were returning home after a sightseeing trip to Kotdwar.
One of the passengers, Gulsher Ahmad, 31, managed to escape from the vehicle when it went into the river and informed local authorities. A team from Uttarakhand’s State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) soon launched a rescue operation.
After several hours, the SDRF team successfully rescued one of the passengers, Mohd Shahbuddin, 32, early on Wednesday. A video of the rescue shows Shahbuddin swimming against the strong current of the river in the rain to reach the rescue personnel who can be heard encouraging and egging him on.
Shahbuddin said, “We were heading back to our village on Tuesday night. As we reached the Kotdwar-Pauri road near the Khoh river, our car got swept away. I don’t remember what happened next. I found myself stranded among the rocks and sat there for three hours. When the SDRF team came, I was relieved beyond words and signalled to them by waving my hands. Thankfully, they spotted me.”
Meanwhile, the body of one of the car occupants, Israar Ahmad, 32, was recovered from the river while the remaining two passengers, Wasim, 30, and Sahil Ahmad, 30, are yet to be located.
