In a tragic incident in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district, a 25-year-old Army jawan, Sunil Rawat, lost his life while trying to save a friend from drowning in the Nandakini river on Wednesday afternoon. Rawat, a native of Nandanagar and attached to the Garhwal Rifles regiment, was home on leave for a religious event when the incident occurred.
According to Nandanagar SHO Narendra Rawat, the soldier had gone to bathe with three local friends at the confluence of the Punera rivulet and the Nandakini river around 2 PM. One of the friends slipped and was dragged into deeper water. In a valiant attempt to rescue him, Sunil Rawat jumped in but was caught in a powerful whirlpool and swept away. Despite the efforts of his friends, Rawat could not be saved due to the treacherous terrain and large submerged boulders.
His body was later recovered by rescue teams, lodged between rocks under the water, and was sent to a nearby hospital for postmortem examination.
In a separate tragedy in Chamoli on the same day, two factory workers from Haryana—Sachin Kumar (30) and Ravi Kumar (26) of Yamunanagar—died after their motorcycle was struck by a landslide near Jyotirmath while returning from Badrinath.
Meanwhile, in Tehri Garhwal, seven people were injured on Thursday in a head-on collision between a Haryana-registered camping van and a UP-registered car on the Rishikesh-Gangotri highway near Sarot temple. The car’s occupants—four from Muzaffarnagar and three from Noida—were en route to Gangotri. Three of the injured are reported to be in serious condition.
These back-to-back incidents highlight the hazards of both natural and road-related emergencies during the peak pilgrimage and travel season in Uttarakhand.
