The porter's body was anchored and stabilised at 130 feet inside the crevasse to stop it from slipping further down
Highlights
- Army porter fell into 200-feet-deep crevasse at Siachen Glacier on Feb 27
- Rescue teams had to cut through 130 feet of ice to retrieve his body
- Last month, 10 soldiers died due to an avalanche in Siachen's Sonam post
About 60 armymen cut through many layers of frozen snow and hard ice in an attempt to rescue a porter who had fallen into a deep crevasse in the Siachen glacier, days after the death of 10 soldiers in an avalanche at the Army's Sonam post.
This morning, soldiers located the body of 40-year-old Thukjay Gyasket, who had fallen about 130 feet into the crevasse last Friday.
The body was located after three days of search and rescue efforts
“After locating the body, rescue teams moved inside the crevasse and anchored it to the ice wall to prevent it from further slipping down. The opening and gap of the narrow crevasse was also widened to retrieve the body intact,” said a statement by the Army.
The porter’s body has been brought down to Hunder near Parthapur and will be handed over his family. Thukjay Gyasket is survived by his mother, wife and two daughters.
The crevasse that he fell into is located at about 19,000 feet above sea level and the temperature inside it would range between -40 and -60 degrees. Climbing into it for rescue operations is dangerous and requires skilled mountaineering.
"The porter accidentally fell into the crevasse on February 27. Rescue operations by specialised army teams were launched immediately and had continued unabated. Rescue teams progressively descended to depths of 60 feet, 90 feet and cut through the frozen snow and ice to finally reach 130 feet deep, where they located the porter's body," a senior Army officer said today.
Civilian Ladakhi men serve as porters in
Siachen and are the lifeline of the Army's operations in the glacier. They are known to be some of the hardiest people in the world, very strong and with immense lung acclimatisation in the rarified air so high above sea level.
The porters work on the glacier on a three-month rotation. The man who died was ferrying stores, north of the Khardung La pass.
Rescue teams had worked night and day to reach the
soldiers buried under 25 feet of ice and six days later,
Lance Naik Hanamanthappa was rescued alive, unconscious in the fibre-reinforced tent that served as the base. Beside him lay the bodies of nine other soldiers.
Lance Naik Hanamanthappa died in an Army hospital in Delhi on February 11, in heartbreak for the entire nation which had been fervently praying for his life.