4 of Delhi family among 7 killed in Gulmarg cable car accident

Srinagar, June 25
Seven people, including four of a family from Delhi, were killed on Sunday when a gondola car crashed after being hit by a tree uprooted by strong winds in Gulmarg, police said.
An uprooted pine tree hit a gondola car cabin and it crashed hundreds of metres down to the ground.

“Seven people, including four from a Delhi family have been killed in the accident,” a police officer said. “More than 100 people are stranded on the gondola ropeway.”
The family hailed from Delhi’s Shalimar Bagh. They have been identified as Jayant Andraskar, Manshea Andraskar and their daughters — Anagha and Janhvi.
Three people from Kashmir — Mukhtar Ahmad, a resident of Chonti Patri Babareshi, and Jahangir Ahmad and Farooq Ahmad Chopan, both residents of Tangmarg — were also killed in the accident.
Two others, Tariq Ahmad and Ajaz Ahmad, both residents of Pachhar, were injured and were taken to a hospital in Srinagar.
All the five locals were said to be working as tourist guides in Gulmarg in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district.
“Police have launched a rescue operation in the forest area,” Baramulla SSP Imtiyaz Hussain Mir said.
An official of the cable car company said about 100 people, who had used the ropeway, were stranded and rescue efforts were on.
“We are resuming the ropeway to rescue the 100 people who have been stranded. We are also ready with the manual rescue operation,” said Riyaz Ahmad, general manager of the Jammu and Kashmir State Cable Car Corporation, which runs Gulmarg Gondola.
Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah questioned why the cable car service had not been shut down as a precautionary measure because of high winds.
Heart breaking images coming out of #Gulmarg . What a tragic way for a family holiday to end. Can’t sympathise enough with the families.

— Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) June 25, 2017
“What terrible news,” he tweeted.
“…it begs the question as to why the cable car operations weren’t suspended in high winds. That’s a laid down SOP [standard operating procedure],” he posted on Twitter.
The two-stage Gulmarg cable car lift ferries people to a height of 13,780 ft above the sea level.
It is the world’s second highest operating cable car project with a cabin capacity of ferrying 600 people in one hour.