An Indian rescue team arrived in Chitwan on Saturday upon Nepali authorities’ request with the Indian side to search for the passengers and two buses that went missing from Trishuli River last week.

Two buses carrying 65 passengers along the Narayanghat-Muglin road section were hit by a landslide in the wee hours of July 12 and swept away by the Trishuli River. Three of the passengers managed to somehow get outside the bus and swam to the bank.

According to Chitwan’s Chief District Officer Indradev Yadav, after hearing about the details of the incident, the Indian team immediately went to the Disaster Management Training School of the Armed Police Force at Kurintar.

The Indian team will be deployed for a search operation for seven days, said Yadav.

After returning from Kurintar, the team went to Simaltal, the incident site which is about 23 kilometres from Narayanghat, and started the search operation.

In the team, there are 12 personnel of India’s National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), who are trained in the rescue and search operations. They have arrived along with necessary devices including three sonar cameras. Of the 12, four are divers.

Members of the Indian squad are Kunal Tiwari, Lalit Kumar, Ravi Shankar Saroj, Sudhir Kumar Singh, Bahadur Nath, Sandeep Kumar Dubey, Vikrant Kumar, Awadh Kishor, Hemant Kumar Yadav, Manoj Kumar Yadav, Sunil Kumar Singh Yadav and Lokesh Kumar.

Rescue and search teams from Nepal Army, Nepal Police and Armed Police Force (APF) have been searching the bus and the passengers since the incident, but they haven’t been able to trace the buses so far.

Of the 62 passengers swept away along with the buses, 24 bodies have been recovered from various locations in Nepal and also from the Indian side. However, only 15 of the bodies have been confirmed to be the passengers of the missing buses.