Shimla, June 18: All seven occupants, comprising three women, belonging to a village, were killed when their SUV skidded off the road and fell into a 500-metre-deep gorge at midnight in Chamba in Himachal Pradesh, police said on Thursday.
The accident took place near Chhatrund on the Masrund-Hamal route. Police came to know about the accident in the morning when passersby saw the vehicle lying in the gorge. It took hours for rescuers to climb down the mountain and bring up the bodies one after the other through narrow hilly paths. Prima facie, the police said the cause of the accident was that the driver of the SUV lost control over the vehicle and plunged into a gorge. The victims, comprising the driver, were returning home after attending a religious ceremony when the accident occurred. Locals said the administration had a tough time extricating the victims from the badly mangled vehicle. People in the area began rescue operations even before local authorities reached the spot.