KL NEWS NETWPORK
SRINAGAR
A mother- son duo from Kolkatta was killed when a snow avalanche buried a taxi in the mountainous Ladakh region of the Jammu and Kashmir state.
A police official told Global News Service that a Xylo Cab (JK10- 5859) carrying three tourists from Kolkatta was on way to Ladakh on Tuesday when a snow avalanche hit the area and buried the Xylo on reaching Khardlunga, a mountain pass, at an altitude of over 5,300m in the region.
In the incident, four people, three of them from a family and the cab driver identified as Abdul Haq were hit by the avalanche, he said.
By the time rescue teams of police and army reached the spot, two tourists were dead while remaining two persons in the cab were rescued in injured condition and shifted to hospital, the official said.
The official identified the dead as Rajasri Basu, 50, a professor of political science at Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata and her son Soumyadeep Basu, 21, an engineering student. Padmanava Basu, 59, the head of the family, is being treated at the army hospital. He is said to be a scientist and head of the nuclear physics department at Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in Kolkata.
After conducting post-mortems and other necessary formalities, the bodies of Soumyadeep and his mother were flown to Calcutta on Wednesday afternoon, the official said.
He said that the condition of Padmanava was stable and he too was flown to the city along with the deceased members of his family.
