Tora landslide: 4 bodies missing, 22 days on, search halts temporarily

Mysuru: Even 22 days into the search operation in the Tora region, where a heavy landslide claimed 10 lives on August 9, four of the bodies remain untraced. The Kodagu district administration has now decided to call a temporary halt to the rescue operations as the 122 member team of the NDRF, Garuda force and police are finding it harder with each day to carry out the search in the incessant rain.

The wait has been agonising for Mr Prabha, who lost his family in the Tora landslide. “We moved from our house, which was flooded, to our mother’s place that was at a higher altitude. But then a landslide buried her house while she was inside with my two children and wife. While they have traced, my wife, the bodies of my mother and two children have still not been found,” said the distraught man. Both Mr Prabha and another local, Harish who lost his 19-year-old, eight months’ pregnant wife, Veena in the landslide, have appealed to the government to call off the search operations as they don’t want to see their loved ones in a decomposed state and have performed their final rites as well.

While the Kodagu district administration has already given a compensation of `1 lakh each to the families of all four missing people, deputy commissioner, Annies Kanmani Joy, has decided to write to Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa to give the remaining `4 lakh to the families from the CM’s relief fund. Under the guidelines they are not eligible for NDRF funds of `4 lakh each unless the bodies of their missing relatives are traced.

As many as 54 gram panchayats and 11 hoblis of Madikeri, Virajpet and Somwarpet saw heavy floods and landslides in the recent deluge.