Five Amarnath pilgrims killed in landslide, 3 hurt

Srinagar: Three Amarnath pilgrims, including a woman, died on Tuesday,  two of them due to cardiac arrest and the third after being hit by a shooting stone-while on way to the  3,888-metre-high cave-shrine in the Kashmir Himalayas. Two of them were from Andhra Pradesh, officials here said, adding that with these, the death toll during this year’s yatra has risen to six.

In a separate incident, five people were killed and three others suffered injures in a landslide on the Baltal route in Ganderbal district of Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday night, the police said.

“A landslide hit between Railpatri and Brarimarg on the Baltal route,” a police official said.

He said five people —  four men and a woman — were killed, while three others were injured.

Meanwhile, on the 6th day of the annual yatra on Tuesday as many as 18, 467 devotees paid obeisance at Amarnath.  So far, 54,833 Yatris have had darshan of the Shivling at the cave-shrine, a spokesman of the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB) said.

The police and SASB officials said that a 75-year-old pilgrim Thota Radhnam of Sivalayam in Andhra Pradesh died of suspected cardiac arrest in a langar at the base-camp of Baltal, 96-km north of J&K’s summer capital Srinagar.

Another pilgrim identified as 65-year-old Radha Krishna Sastry died following massive cardiac arrest at Sangam, the place where the two tracks — shorter Baltal and traditional Pahalgam — meet. Mr Sastry was a resident of Andhra Pradesh, the police said.

A third pilgrim, Pushkar Joshi, a resident of Uttarakhand, who was injured after being hit by a shooting stone between Brarimarg and Railpathri en-route to Amarnath on Monday, succumbed on Tuesday, the  police said.