Bogus Everest claim; Pune police couple dismissed

8/08/2017

PUNE: Suspended police constable couple Dinesh and Tarkeshwari Rathod, who had faked about scaling Mount Everest in May 2016, have been dismissed from the police service, a senior official said.

The couple had been suspended from Pune police in November last year after an inquiry conducted by a fact-finding committee set up by police found that their claims were misleading and bogus, and it was confirmed that they had faked about the ascent. 

“The couple faked about the Everest ascent, morphed the photographs, shared misleading information and while doing this, brought disrepute to the Maharashtra police department and did not report to duty. Based on the inquiry, we dismissed the couple from the department and an order to this effect was issued on Saturday,” said Sahebrao Patil, Additional Commissioner of police (Admin) of Pune police.

The couple had been issued a show-cause notice in May this year and they were asked why they should not be dismissed from the services, he added. Dinesh and Tarkeshwari, posted at Shivajinagar police headquarters in the city, had claimed on June 5 last year that they have become the first Indian couple to scale the Everest.

A group of local mountaineers had later claimed that couple was never at the summit and alleged that they had faked their expedition by morphing photographs, which showed them at the Everest peak. In August 2016, the Nepal government had reportedly banned the entry of Dinesh and Tarkeshwari in Nepal for 10 years.

Following a complaint against the Rathods, an inquiry was ordered into the allegations and the city police had also written to the Nepal government to investigate the claim. Surendra Shelke, one of the complainants and secretary of a city-based mountaineering association, had alleged that the couple had morphed the pictures and there were several discrepancies in the version given about the summit, which could prove the falseness of the claim.