A Kashmiri engineer is among hundreds of people who went missing following a glacier burst in Uttarakhand state in northern India on Sunday morning.
Basharat Ahmad Zargar, a resident of Soura area of Srinagar, was working on a privately owned Rishi Ganga power project (130 Mw), which is on the upper stream of the Alaknanda riversite and was the first to face the brunt of the avalanche.
Zargar went missing on Sunday morning after a glacier near Raini village above Rishiganga river in Uttarakhand burst.
“I talked to him at 10:00 am on Sunday, but his phone was switched-off when I called him again at 10:40am and has been like that since then. His last seen status on Whatsapp is also 10:25 am,” Basharat’s brother Shabir Ahmad told Greater Kashmir.
He said they have also been contacting other members of the project on which Basharat was working since yesterday for confirmation regarding his whereabouts. “They are cleaning the rubble and said if they get any leads they will notify us,” informed Shabir.
The family of Basharat are on their way to Uttarakhand in search of him and are hopeful that they find him in good health.
Greater Kashmir reached out to the Director of Disaster Management J&K, Aamir Ali on phone who said, “We are in touch with our counterparts in Uttarakhand and are waiting for their authentic reports about the confirmation regarding the missing report of Kashmiri engineer.”
According to the Basharat’s family, he has been working on the Rishiganga power project for last one and a half year, “He was at the head office of the company in Delhi and had gone to Uttarakhand a week before to check the status of the project,” Shabir said.
While the flood hit the Rishiganga small hydropower project, with around 40 people reportedly missing there, the flow and debris from the river merged with that from the Dhauliganga river and damaged the under-construction Vishnugad hydropower project of India’s largest power generation utility in the Tapovan area.
At least 15 people have died due to the flooding caused by the glacier burst and close to 150 people are still missing.
An operation to rescue people trapped in a tunnel near the Tapovan dam is currently underway and heavy machinery is being used to clear the debris