“I came to know about my brother’s death through his YouTube search history and news reports on Google,” said Jayanthashree G., sister of accident victim Karthigeyan P.G., recalling the heartbreaking circumstances under which she learned of the tragedy.

Karthigeyan and his family were among the seven persons who died in an accident when their taxi plunged into a 500-metre deep gorge on the Bairgarh-Sach-Pass-Killar Road in Chamba District of Himachal Pradesh on the night of May 29. Karthigeyan and Arvind Chandrakar’s family travelled from Bengaluru on May 19 to Delhi, Mathura and Himachal Pradesh.

While Karthigeyan and his family are natives of Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu, Arvind and his family are from Chhattisgarh. Karthigeyan ran a food catering business and supplied food to several private schools in Kadugodi in Bengaluru and his wife Manimala was a Mathematics teacher at KSVK school in Channasandra. Their son Nandan was in class VII in Chrysalis High in Kadugodi. Arvind worked in a multinational company in Bengaluru who was accompanied by his wife Prachi, two sons Darsh and Akshad, who also studied in the same school.

Taekwondo event ends in tragedy

Both families went to Dalhousie in Himachal as their children were participating in the National Taekwondo Competition to represent their school.

Ms. Jayanthashree said, “My brother and his wife Manimala and son Nandan left for Delhi on May 19. They visited various places like Taj Mahal, Qutub Minar, etc. and then travelled to Mathura. Both the families travelled together all along as their children were participating in the National Taekwondo Competition that was organised in Dalhousie in Himachal Pradesh. The competition was organised on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and on the weekend, they planned to go on a trek to Sach Pass in Chamba district.”

Google search revealed the tragedy

She added, “The last I spoke to my brother was on Friday morning, and he had only mentioned that he was planning to go on a trek along with his family. He wasn’t sure where exactly they wanted to go. Later, when I did not get any calls from them for more than a day, I logged into my brother’s YouTube account and the search history. His search history showed Sach Pass, Chamba district. That’s how I figured out they had left for trekking to this place. I suspected something was wrong when the contact number was not reachable. That’s when I randomly typed Chamba district, sach pass incident. It was shocking for me to know they had met with an accident. Initially, the news reports showed no names of the deceased. Later, I came across the names of people who were killed in the accident, and my brother’s family was one of them.”

Ms Jayanthashree stated that it was difficult for them to contact officials from Himachal Pradesh.

“Even the local officials didn’t know there was an accident. It was only when the owner of the car rental company checked for the location of his taxi driver. The GPS was indicating the car stranded in a place for a long time. We reached out to a bureaucrat working in Delhi through one of our relatives who was able to connect us with the local officials in Himachal Pradesh. My husband, uncle and a cousin brother have left for Himachal Pradesh and the bodies will be brought via Amritsar-Delhi and Coimbatore to Tiruppur tonight or tomorrow morning. We have informed our mother Vijaylakshmi, 60, as we didn’t want her to be shocked after seeing my brother’s bodies.”