Cable car with 11 onboard gets stuck mid-air in Parwanoo, all rescued

SHIMLA: Eleven people, including five women, were stranded for hours after a cable car was stuck mid-air at Parwanoo Timber Trail in Himachal Pradesh's Solan district, officials said on Monday.

All of them were rescued after a six-hour-long operation, they said.

According to Solan Superintendent of Police Virendra Sharma, another cable car trolley was deployed to rescue the people. Later, a team from National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) also reached the spot, the officials said, adding the incident was reported around 11 am.

One of the rescued persons told the media that all 11 tourists were from Delhi.

Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur, who reached the spot after getting information about the incident, talked to the rescued tourists. Later, speaking to the media, Thakur said Union Home Minister Amit Shah talked to him twice over phone and sent an NDRF team to the spot, while an air force helicopter was also put on standby. To a query, the CM said that the incident would be probed to determine if there was any negligence on the part of the private company running the timber trail. Earlier, State Disaster Management Director Sudesh Mokhta said eight people were stuck in the timber trail due to some technical snag in the cable car. A tourist from Punjab, Anupam Bhagria, said that the safety of tourists using the timber trails should be ensured. Accountability should be fixed in such incidents, otherwise timber trails should be closed, she added.

Meanwhile, a video clip apparently taken by one of the trapped tourists was widely shared on social media in which an aged tourist can be heard saying that he is a diabetes and kidney patient and cannot be rescued by a rope. In the video, some other people were also saying that they were not fit to be taken out like this. A similar incident at the Timber Trail had occurred about 20 years ago in which one person was killed. In October 1992, 10 of the 11 stuck people had been rescued in an operation by the Army and Air Force, while the cable car operator had died. Nearly two months ago, 15 tourists were trapped mid-air on a ropeway at Trikut hills in Jharkhand's Deoghar district for around 40 hours. Twelve of them were rescued by Indian Air Force helicopters, while three people had died in the incident that took place on April 11.