Skeletons discovered 3 years after Kedar tragedy

DEHRADUN: A joint team of Uttarakhand police and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) are in Kedarnath to conduct search operations on the Kedarnath-Triyuginarayan trek route where a number of skeletal remains were spotted by a trekking team earlier in the week.
Sources said medical experts would collect DNA samples of the remains before their last rites are conducted at the site.Early on Sunday morning, Uttarakhand police will conduct a mass cremation of the skeletal remains as per Hindu rituals in the presence of a priest.
“It is not possible for us to ascertain the exact number. But the remains may belong to over 20 persons,” Rudryaprayag SP Prahalad Singh said.
The team involved in the search operation, which will be carried out with the help of local residents, has been divided into two units. The first unit of 16 policemen will start from Kedarnath on Sunday. Personnel from SDRF, part of the second team, will start from Triyuginarayan. The distance between Kedarnath and Triyuginarayan is about 27 km.
Over one lakh pilgrims were stranded in the Kedar region during the flash floods of June 2013. More than 1,10,000 people were evacuated from the affected areas. However, the exact number of casualties have not been ascertained, even three years after the tragedy.