Tony B. Sukla, 44, hails from Texas in the USA but moved to West Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh to run a school for children from the distressed families. His friends here are now worried as he is among those people who went missing after the devastating earthquake crippled Nepal.
He, along with a high school friend, went to Nepal for mountaineering. Efforts of his friends to contact him yielded no results.
As gory news of earthquake trickled in, relatives of those pilgrims, tourists and mountaineers, who are in Nepal now, began to worry for their safety.
“He came to India 10 years ago to set up the school at a village near Palakollu by spending about ₹60 lakhs. We are a bit worried about his safety,” John Babu, his friend, told Business Line.
Neelima, an employee of a multi-national IT firm who also went on a trekking expedition, too went missing after hostile conditions cut off all communication.
But later an executive of her company confirmed that Neelima is safe in Nepal.
Meanwhile, another batch of 10 pilgrims reached the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport this morning. Control rooms set up by Andhra Pradesh and Telangana Governments have been receiving calls from the relatives.
“We have not received any information about missing persons,” a top Telangana Government official told Business Line from Delhi.
Indian Mountaineering Foundation is collecting information from the base camps. “Two climbers, Praveen C M and Ratnesh, were stuck at the Camp-1 due to the massive avalanche. They have been heli-lifted safely to the Base Camp. Shekhar Babu, Mala Honnati, and Bimla Negi, who were on the Tibet side of Mt Everest, are all safe and are at the Base Camp on their side,” the foundation has said on its Facebook wall.