Over a month later, dog found alive under J&K landslide debris

Confirming the recovery, Deputy Inspector General of Police for Udhampur-Reasi range, Garib Dass, said “The cops will not leave the area until they retrieve the last person buried under the landslides, or there is snowfall’’.

For the past one month, nearly 40-50 personnel of the Jammu Kashmir Police and members of SDRF have been carrying out excavation for those buried in the landslides. They continued the excavation despite the fact that members of National Disaster Rescue Force (NDRF), after retrieving 13 bodies during a fortnight-long operation, left the area, saying that it was not possible to bring out other bodies from under the debris manually.

To carry out mechanical digging using JCBs, the state police got Public Works Department (PWD) engineers construct a 15 ft wide and two km long Kuchha road from Thathli to the landslide site where the village once existed. Since then, the cops along with SDRF members have retrieved 14 more bodies from under the debris raising the total number of people found dead to 27.

Forty villagers were buried alive along with their houses and cattle after Saddal village near Pancheri disappeared in landslides triggered by incessant rains on September 6.