Four more Amarnath pilgrims died following cardiac arrest while on way to or returning from the cave-shrine in Kashmir hills overnight, the police said on Friday. With the latest deaths, the toll has risen to 72 since the beginning of the annual yatra on June 25 apart from a local porter who slipped to death while trekking along the Baltal-Amarnath arduous route two weeks ago.
Officials here said that 60-year-old Nirmala Tripathi, a pilgrim from UP, suffered a massive heart attack while returning from Amarnath. While being shifted to a medical facility set up in the hills, she breathed her last, they said. Another pilgrim Chandmal from Madhya Pradesh died of cardiac arrest at Brarimarg, a critical spot along the track to the cave-shrine. He too was returning to a base-camp after paying obeisance to the shrine. The remaining two pilgrims found dead in the yatra area could not be identified immediately, officials said adding that they too are reported to have died of heart failure.
Health department officials here said that the doctors deputed at the base-camps and other halting places en-route to Amarnath have found that most of the pilgrims they have examined were suffering from shortness of breath, persistent dry cough, bright red stained sputum, weakness, fatigue, drowsiness, chest tightness, congestion and increased heart rate.
Also, majority of the pilgrims come from the low altitude and before embarking on journey in the high altitude area should be made to acclimatize at least for 48 hours. But they begin their trekking immediately after arriving at the base-camps in vehicles, which is the main reason for the mountain sickness that ultimately results in pulmonary edema or oedema, an abnormal accumulation of fluid beneath the skin or in one or more cavities of the body that produces swelling and cardiac arrests.
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Sabarimala case: kerala hc lets off actress
age Correspondent
KOCHI, JULY 13
The Kerala high court on Friday let off Kannada actress Jayamala and astrologer Parappana-ngadi Unnikrishna Panicker, from the 2006 Sabarimala Devapra-snam case.
The court quashed the chargesheet, while Justice S.S. Satheesachandran held that the accused, Unnikrishna Panicker, his assistant A.N. Reghupathy and Jayamala were not liable to be prosecuted for the offence registered against them.
What was stated in the chargesheet was not sufficient to hold that he had made (certain) declarations with the deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of a class of persons, the court held.
In June, 2006, the astrologer conducted a four-day “devaprasnam” at the Sabarimala temple, and said “there were signs of a woman having entered” the sanctum sanctorum of the Sabarimala temple.