A man employed in a software company in Bengaluru went missing from the group of trekkers exploring Kumaraparvatha, the fourth highest peak in Karnataka, on Monday. Santhosh, 25, a techie from Gayatri Nagar in Bengaluru, was with a group of 12 trekkers trekking in Kumaraparvatha near Subramanya in Dakshina Kannada. A search operation has been launched to look for him and 5 teams, around 30-40 people in total, are engaged in the search operation, a police official from Subramanya police station told TNM.
The group started the trek at 7 am and walked for 5-6 km before meeting forest department officials. Since it was 12:30 pm, they were not permitted to trek further as trekking is allowed only in the morning. The group camped in the area by pitching tents. They spent the night there and started heading for the peak on Sunday morning.
The twelve trekkers were divided into two groups of six members each. While one group managed to reach the peak on Sunday afternoon, the other group returned to Bhatramane. Santhosh was part of the team that reached the peak but on the way back, it started raining. When the group stopped to wear raincoats, they realised Santhosh was missing.
“It started raining and we stopped for 10 minutes to wear raincoats. That’s when we lost contact with Santhosh. We assumed he had gone ahead, only to find out at the end that he was missing. There were two routes, one that reaches the town and the other the jungle. We suspect Santhosh lost his way,” Abhishek, one of the trekkers, told Times of India.
Santhosh chose to descend from the trek on his own but went missing in the span of a few minutes. The group of trekkers searched for Santhosh on Monday but after he was not found, they filed a complaint at the Subramanya Police Station. A fresh search operation involving police and forest department officials was planned for Tuesday morning, Deccan Herald reported.
A five-member team comprising officials from the two departments along with the remaining trekkers plan to expand the area to search for Santhosh.