Amid allegations that the >Maharashtra police couple — Dinesh and Tarakeshwari Rathod — ‘falsified’ their ascent of Mount Everest, the Nepal government has ordered a probe to check the veracity of their claims.
According to reports in local newspapers in Kathmandu, the Department of Tourism (DoT) has initiated the probe to verify the couple’s claims to have scaled the summit y on May 23.
The DoT issued certificates to the couple on June 10 showing their photos of having successfully completed the gruelling ascent to the top of the 8,848-metre summit. If the probe finds them guilty, their certificates will be rescinded and they will be banned from expeditions, DoT authorities have said.
The Rathods claimed their ‘achievement’ in a press conference on June 5.
However, since then, their so-called feat has snowballed into a full-blown controversy with fellow mountaineers in Pune and Mumbai accusing them of presenting a phoney version of true events by ‘photoshopping’ pictures of their ascent.
Police complaint Last week, Satyarup Siddhanta, a Bengaluru-based software engineer hailing from Kolkata, lodged a complaint with the Kolkata cyber crime police alleging that the police couple had morphed pictures of his ascent to the summit.
Local papers in Nepal have quoted the DoT authorities seeking an explanation from Makalu Adventure Treks, the group that organised the Rathods’ expedition, as to why it applied for certificates by providing them with ‘morphed’ photos.
Mohan Lamsal, the Managing Director of the company, is quoted in a local daily as having asked the police duo to come back to Nepal to “clarify their stance at the earliest.”
