I came to know about my brother’s death only through a Google search: sister of Himachal Pradesh accident victim

Karthigeyan and his family were among seven people who died in an accident when their taxi plunged into a 500-metre-deep ravine on the Bairgarh-Sach-Pass-Killar road in Himachal Pradesh’s Chamba district on the night of May 29. Photo credit: ANI

“I came to know about my brother’s death through his YouTube search history and Google news,” said Jayanthashree G., sister of accident victim Karthigeyan PG, recalling the heartbreaking circumstances in which she learned about the tragedy.

Karthigeyan and his family were among seven people who died in an accident when their taxi plunged into a 500-metre-deep ravine on the Bairgarh-Sach-Pass-Killar Road in Himachal Pradesh’s Chamba district on the night of May 29. The family of Karthigeyan and Arvind Chandrakar traveled to the Himalayas from May 19 to Bengaluru and Delahur.

While Karthigeyan and his family are natives of Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu, Arvind and his family are from Chhattisgarh. Karthigeyan ran a food catering business and supplied food to several private schools in Kadugodi, Bengaluru, and his wife Manimala was a mathematics teacher at KSVK School in Channasandra. Their son Nandan was in Class VII at Chrysalis High in Kadugodi. Arvind was working in a multinational company in Bengaluru accompanied by his wife Prachi, two sons Darsh and Akshad who were also studying in the same school.

Taekwondo ends in tragedy

Both families went to Dalhousie in Himachal when their children were participating in a national Taekwondo competition to represent their school.

Ms. Jayanthashree said, “My brother and his wife Manimala and son Nandan left for Delhi on May 19. They visited various places like Taj Mahal, Qutub Minar etc and then traveled to Mathura. Both the families traveled together all the time as their children participated in the national Taekwondo competition which was organized in Dalhousie and was scheduled for Friday in Himachal where the competition was held in Pradesh on Thursday. go to trek to Sach pass in Chamba district.’

A Google search revealed the tragedy

She added: “I last spoke to my brother on Friday morning and he only mentioned that he was planning to go on a trek with his family. He wasn’t sure exactly where they wanted to go. Later, when I didn’t hear from them for over a day, I logged into my brother’s YouTube account and search history. His search history showed Sach Pass, Chamba district. I suspected I had left something like that. When there was no contact number, when I randomly typed, the incident in Chamba area, it was shocking to me to know that they met with an accident. Later I came across the names of the people who were killed in the accident and she was one of them.

Ms. Jayanthashree said it was difficult for them to contact officials from Himachal Pradesh.

“Even the local officials did not know that there was an accident. It was only when the car rental owner checked the location of his taxi driver. The GPS showed that the car was stuck at the spot for a long time. Through one of our relatives, we approached a bureaucrat working in Delhi who was able to connect us with the local officials in Himachal Pradesh. The bodies of my husband and uncle and brother will be taken through Pradesh Amritsar-Delhi and Coimbatore to Tiruppur tonight or tomorrow morning We informed our mother Vijaylakshmi, 60 as we didn’t want her to be shocked to see my brother’s bodies.

Published – 1 Jun 2026 22:06 IST