BSF officer is first Indian to scale Mount Everest six times
DEHRADUN : BSF officer Loveraj Singh Dharamshaktu became the first Indian mountaineer to conquer the world’s highest peak Mount Everest for a record sixth time on Saturday.
“As per GPS statistics, Loveraj ascended the Everest at 0610 hours,” said his wife Reena Kaushal who heads the Uttarakhand government’s mountaineering institute at Munsiyari and who is the first Indian woman to ski to the South Pole and unfurl the tricolour in 2010.
Loveraj, a Padma Shri awardee, hails from Uttarakhand and scaled the Everest first in 1998. His second summit was in 2008, followed by 2009 and 2012, and the last one was in 2013.
The BSF assistant commandant, serving in Dehradun, was heading a team of three climbers from Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) and his record comes close on the heels of another by an Indian—on May 22, Arunachal’s Anshu Jamsenpa became the first woman to scale Everest twice in five days.
“It’s a proud moment for family, friends and the nation. No other mountaineer from India scaled Mt Everest six times,” Reena said.
An ONGC spokesperson said three of its employees, Yogendar Garbiyal, N Jagoi and Rahul Jarngal scaled the Everest, making the oil giant one of the first corporates in the world to successfully summit the peak.
“Yogendar and Loveraj summited the peak at 0610 hrs while Jagoi and Rahul achieved the feat at 0745 hours on Saturday,” ONGC said in a note, adding that all the four were back to South Col (Camp 4) at around 11:00 am.