NEW DELHI: Two Indian police officers who falsely claimed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest last year have been sacked, authorities said Tuesday.
Nepal’s government last year imposed a 10-year mountaineering ban on Dinesh and Tarakeshwari Rathod, a married couple, after finding they had doctored photos to support their claim.
Now the police force in the western Indian city of Pune where the couple worked has dismissed them after conducting its own investigation.
“We dismissed them from service on Saturday after the completion of an internal departmental inquiry,” Pune’s additional commissioner of police Sahebrao Patil told AFP by telephone.
“We found that they had given false information to media, cheated the Indian and Nepali governments and morphed photos to show that they had reached the top of Mount Everest — which, in fact, they had not.”
Nepal’s tourism department initially awarded the Rathods a certificate after they said they had reached the top of the world’s highest mountain on May 23, 2016.
They investigated after fellow climbers cast doubt on the claim and said photos purporting to show the couple at the summit were doctored.
The incident prompted a review of the procedure for certifying ascents, which currently demands photos and reports from team leaders and government liaison officers stationed at the base camp.
There has been a steady rise in the number of climbers attempting to scale Everest in the last decade as the cost has fallen.
Nearly 450 mountaineers reached the summit of the 8,848-meter (29,029-foot) peak from the Nepal side during the brief spring climbing season this year, according to official figures.
Indian police fire couple for faking Everest climb
Indian police fire couple for faking Everest climb
Pakistan rules out talks with Afghanistan, says more than 330 Afghan fighters killed in operations
- Pakistan is a major non-NATO ally of Washington, while the US considers the Afghan Taliban a “terrorist” group
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has ruled out talks with Afghanistan until there is an end to “terrorism” emanating from Afghan soil, officials said on Friday. The statement follows the killing of more than 330 Afghan fighters in cross-border skirmishes this week.
The latest clashes between the neighbors erupted after Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan territory last weekend triggered retaliatory attacks along the border on Thursday, escalating long‑simmering tensions over Pakistan’s claim that Afghanistan shelters Pakistani Taliban militants. Afghanistan denies this, saying Pakistan is deflecting blame for its own security failures.
Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said his country had killed 331 Afghan fighters, destroyed over 100 posts and targeted 37 military locations across Afghanistan. Afghan officials have said more than 50 Pakistani soldiers have been killed and several Pakistan posts captured. Neither casualty figures nor battlefield claims by either side could be independently verified.
Meanwhile, Mosharraf Zaidi, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s spokesperson for foreign media, ruled out any talks with Afghanistan until Kabul addresses the issue, while the US expressed support for what it called Pakistan’s “right to defend itself” against attacks from Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers.
“There won’t be any talks, there is nothing to talk about ... Terrorism from Afghanistan has to end,” Zaidi told state-run Pakistan TV Digital, saying Islamabad would continue to target militant havens inside Afghanistan.
“Pakistan’s responsibility is to protect its citizens. If we know that there is a terrorist in point A and we know that there is a terrorist enabler at point A, we will find a weapon to land at point A and eliminate the threat.”
Zaidi said he did not expect Pakistan to deviate from this position: “We have clearly articulated what we are doing and what we plan on continuing to do and what it will take for us to stop doing what we are doing.”
He added: “And we will expect that both the international community and the regime in question, the Afghan Taliban, will come to their senses and will help reduce instability and disorder in this region.”
Pakistan is a major non-NATO ally of Washington, while the US considers the Afghan Taliban a “terrorist” group.
“The United States supports Pakistan’s right to defend itself against attacks from the Taliban, a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group,” Reuters quoted a State Department spokesperson as saying.
US diplomat Allison Hooker said on X she had spoken with Pakistan Foreign Secretary Amna Baloch on Friday.
The State Department spokesperson said Washington was aware of the escalation in tensions and “outbreak of fighting between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban,” adding the US was “saddened by the loss of life.”
“The Taliban have consistently failed to uphold their counterterrorism commitments,” it said. “Terrorist groups use Afghanistan as a launching pad for their heinous attacks.”
Meanwhile, Afghan Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid called for talks to resolve the crisis.
“We have always emphasized peaceful resolution, and now too we want the issue to be resolved through dialogue,” he said on Friday afternoon.
Asked what Pakistan desired, Tarar said: “Neutralizing the threat and ensuring that Pakistan is safe. Because for us, we’ve been good neighbors, we’ve been very friendly neighbors, we’ve been very, very generous neighbors. Our generosity, unfortunately, has often been seen as our weakness. So the objective, aim is to neutralize the threat and make Pakistan safe.”
He added it was too early to comment on a ceasefire as it was an evolving situation.
