A girl from Visakhapatnam suffered grievous injuries during a trek in Rajmachi in Pune district and was successfully rescued by a group of mountaineers and villagers on Sunday.
The girl, Meena (24), is now safe and recuperating.
She was part of a four-member group in which two were from Vizag and two hailed from Hyderabad. They had come for a trek in the Sahyadri Hill ranges.
The rescue was coordinated by veteran trekker and mountaineer Rahul Meshram, the President of Tekshitiz Sanstha, who is also the Mumbai head of Maharashtra Mountaineers Rescue Coordination Centre.
According to Meshram, the girl slipped while descending from the Shrivardhan citadel.
“She slipped at a mini patch and twisted her knee badly, fracturing it and disrupting it from the joint. She was unable to walk due to the injury and pain,” he said.
Her trek-mates gave her a pain-killer and a knee brace to make her stable.
A trekker descending down from the fort gave information about the injured girl to the local villagers at Rajmachi.
“I was at Udhewadi with my family,” Meshram said, adding that the Forest and Village Joint Committee representative Ganesh Umbre informed him about the incident.
“The local team was getting ready for the rescue which I too joined. As there was no stretcher available with locals, I advised them to carry bed sheets along with rope and bamboo. Our team reached the injured girl and immediately started the rescue,” he said.
As a certified medical first-aider, Meshram examined her condition. “As her weight was more, we decided to make a rope harness to carry her down. After safely attaching her to the makeshift stretcher arrangements, we started slowly descending down the fort with the injured girl. We as a team took extreme precautions of ourselves and her to carry her down on the rocky steps patch of the fort,” he said.
As soon as the descent was complete, she was rushed to a local hospital in Lonavala.
“This fast rescue was possible only and only because of the local youth adventure lovers of Rajmachi village,” he said, adding that the rescue team included Pratap Umbare, Sangam Vare, Ganesh Umbre, Ashok Umbre, Suraj Vare, Vitthal Mengaal, Shyam, Khandu Vare, Dnyaneshwar Umbare, Tukaram Umbare.