New Delhi: On 13 June, Lahaul and Spiti Superintendent of Police Mayank Chaudhary received a distress call from the US Embassy in New Delhi about a missing US national. The missing person was Trevor Bockstahler, a 31-year-old mountaineer.
The call set off a search which ended with a joint team of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Indian Army, and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) bringing back the body of Bockstahler on the night of 17 June.
The police first searched the hotels and lodges where foreign tourists generally stay in Lahaul and Spiti district’s Kaza subdivision, where he was believed to have gone missing from.
When they could not locate Bockstahler in any of the homestays, SP Chaudhary reached out to the American’s father to see if he had any information that could throw up a clue about his possible whereabouts.
“When Bockstahler’s father said that his son had come to Manali and taken a bike on rent, I approached the SHO (station house officer) of the Manali Police Station and got the bike’s number. With access to some of Bockstahler’s photographs and the bike number, we had enough information to proceed with,” Chaudhary said.
The police in the Kaza subdivision managed to trace the location of the bike, but hit another wall with no more leads to follow.
Another conversation with Bockstahler’s father revealed that his son loved adventure sports and base jumping, leading them to conduct searches of two parallel cliffs in Kaza’s Tashigang, Chaudhary said.
“Details about the paraglider’s love for adventure sports, specifically base jumping, more or less confirmed where he could have gone from the site where his bike was spotted,” he added.
Based on this lead, the police, using binoculars, spotted vultures circling above a cliff, indicating the presence of a human body. Subsequently, they enlisted the help of the Dogra regiment of the Indian Army, which deployed a drone.
The drone was able to identify the body and a portion of the parachute possibly used by Bockstahler before the accident. The police then roped in ITBP to recover the body that they assumed was located at nearly 2,300 feet above ground level in Kaza.
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How ITBP retrieved the body
The ITBP sent a five-member team from Kullu and Karga in Lahaul district to Kaza. The team was led by Inspector Tenzin, a member of ITBP Mountain Rescue Team, and included Constables Kapil Rana, Padam Tondup, Sanjay Singh and Rigzin Namgial.
The ITBP mountain rescue operation began early on 15 June.
ITBP Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Prem Singh, who supervised the process from Shimla, told ThePrint that the rescue team, apart from the technical equipment needed, also had to carry a stretcher up the cliff to retrieve the body.
“The biggest challenge was the sharp cliff that is 400-foot high as it is completely perpendicular to the mountain base which is 1,900-foot above ground level in Kaza, which itself is situated 12,500 feet above sea level. Add to that the continuous movement of rock. It was an arduous task for our personnel and, hence, the process took a long time,” said DIG Singh.
It took the ITBP team another day to reach the spot where the body was found, DIG Singh added, explaining that the weight and height of the body, and the height at which it was located, made its retrieval an immensely difficult task.
According to ITBP officials, Bockstahler had suffered several fractures, and the injuries to his face had made visual identification difficult. However, DIG Singh said that several personal belongings found at the site, such as the external battery of a GoPro camera, key to a homestay, his passport and credit cards, confirmed the body was that of Bockstahler.
“Our rescue team could retrieve approximately 25 of his belongings. Just the GoPro camera that he could have been carrying and the helmet were not found at the spot where his body was recovered,” Singh added.
Carrying the body back was a challenging task with the rescue team making pit stops midway on the cliff to secure the body with a rope. “On 17th morning, they started their descent again, but could reach the base of the hill only by 9.15 pm,” he said.
Chaudhary said that after a postmortem, the body was handed over to embassy staff, who had come to the Lahaul and Spiti, on 19 June.
“Tourists coming here to Lahaul Spiti don’t take precautions while on their vacations or adventurous trips. This unfortunate accident should serve as a lesson to all tourists that they should treat their safety as the topmost priority before starting any risky activities,” Chaudhary said.
(Edited by Radifah Kabir)
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