Wayanad (Kerala): The death toll in the landslide at Wayanad's Kalladi rose to seven on Friday, with one person still missing, after search teams recovered another body from the site. District officials said the body was found in the river near the landslide site.
The deceased is identified as Rakesh Guchait, a surveyor from West Bengal, said minister T Siddique.
Search is underway to trace Vikram Rana, a construction manager from Himachal Pradesh who went missing in the landslide.
" Rakesh's family identified the body. It has now been shifted to taluka headquarters hospital. After the postmortem, body will be shifted to Calicut Medical College for embalming. Then the body will be airlifted to his own location. One more person is missing, Vikram Rana. He is the project manager and the search is in full swing," said the minister.
With the latest recovery, only one person remains missing.
Several teams from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the Fire and Rescue Services, and the police resumed search operations early on Friday, the fourth day since the disaster. Heavy earthmoving machinery was deployed to clear mud and debris.
Till Thursday, six bodies had been recovered from the landslide site.
The landslide occurred on July 7 at the site of the Anakkompoyil–Meppadi tunnel project, which is intended to connect the Wayanad and Kozhikode districts.
On Thursday, the search personnel recovered the body of a civil engineer from Himachal Pradesh. The victim - Rahul Sharma, a resident of Rewalsar in the Mandi district, was working at the project site in Wayanad. Chandraban, an operator from Madhya Pradesh; Bikash Kumar, a civil foreman from Bihar; and Anmol Dodrai, a worker from Jharkhand.
Wayanad police have registred a case of unnatural death and started a probe.
(With PTI inputs)
