BELAGAVI: A group of seven schoolgirls and their guide from Goa who went missing in Chorla Ghats on the borders of Goa and Karnataka were traced in the forests of Belagavi on Tuesday.
The group which lost their way and stayed inside the forests without food and shelter was found by the combing team of forest officials 17 hours after they went missing. The group was found stranded near Sada village of Khanapur taluk on Tuesday and most of the girls were in a dehydrated state.
The team, which comprised schoolgirls aged between 11 and 13, was led by Brother Melany Mariano Pinto (32), who is attached to a church in Campal- Miramar in Goa. It is said that the team entered the forests from Goa without any permission.
The guide Pinto allegedly told the students that he knew the route very well and would return to Goa by Monday evening. The team visited a waterfall on the Goa-Karnataka border, after which they made their way back to the point from where they had entered the forest. But they got lost due to a thick cover of fog and rain.
On Monday evening, after parents of the girls were unable to reach them over phone, they approached police in Goa. Police and foresters from Goa informed their Belagavi counterparts at 2 am on Tuesday and a combing operation was taken up.
The rescue operation launched from different directions at 6 am was succesful by 10 am. The Belagavi forest department booked cases against the group for trespassing and entering the forest without permission. A local court granted them bail and they were handed over to Goa police on Tuesday.
Not the first time
This is not the first time that trekking teams have gone missing in the forests of Belagavi. About a year ago, three youths from Hubballi had gone missing in the Nagargali forests of Khanapur and were later traced by the Forest Department after a prolonged search for three days. The trio had gone trekking without any permission.
Rescued after five days
In 2005, four crew members of a helicopter were killed on the spot in a crash and one of the survivors
was traced after five days of extensive search. The chopper had taken off from Dabolim in Goa and was to heading to Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. The chopper crashed in the Western Ghats on the Karnataka-Goa border.