Indian police fire couple for faking Everest climb
Two Indian police officers who falsely claimed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest last year have been sacked.
Nepal’s government last year imposed a 10-year mountaineering ban on Dinesh and Tarakeshwari Rathod, a married couple, after finding they had doctored photos to support their claim.
Now the force in the Indian city of Pune, where the couple worked, has dismissed them after conducting its own investigation.
“We dismissed them from service on Saturday after the completion of an internal inquiry,” said Pune’s additional commissioner of police, Sahebrao Patil.
“We found they had given false information to media, cheated the Indian and Nepali governments and morphed photos to show that they had reached the top of Mount Everest, which they had not.”
Nepal’s tourism department initially awarded the Rathods a certificate after they said they had reached the top of the world’s highest mountain on May 23 last year.
They investigated after fellow climbers cast doubt on the claim and said their photos were doctored.
The incident prompted a review of certifying ascents, which demands photos and reports from team leaders and government liaison officers at the base camp.
There has been a steady rise in the number of climbers trying to scale Everest in the past decade as the cost has fallen.
About 450 mountaineers reached the summit of the 8,848-metre peak from the Nepal side in the brief spring climbing season this year.