Three drown after chairlift falls into River Indus

MANSEHRA: Three people drowned on Friday when a locally-made chairlift fell into the River Indus in the Barseen area of Upper Kohistan district.

Naseeb Khan,28, Mohammad Sher,36, and Fidaur Rehman,18, were crossing the river using the chairlift, known locally as a Doli, when one of its two pillars gave way, causing the lift to collapse into the water.

“The police and our teams take part in the rescue operation, but floodwaters have been hampering our efforts to recover the bodies,” Abdul Rehman, an official of Rescue 1122, told reporters.

Eyewitnesses said that one of the victims was still attached to the chairlift when it fell, while the other two were swept away.He said that his department’s divers could not conduct rescue operations freely as rivers in the area flow with rocks and boulders from nearby mountainous tributaries.

Sajjad Khan, the Deputy Superintendent of Police, told reporters that despite moving the shovel machine to the river, they couldn’t drag the chairlift out of the water.“We need modern machines to carry out rescue and recovery operations to fish out bodies from the River Indus here,” he added.

The provincial government, which had previously imposed a ban on chairlift operations in mountainous regions following an incident in Battagram where eight students were stranded in a malfunctioning lift, had recently lifted the ban before this accident occurred.