V Velayudham By

Express News Service

CHIKBALLAPUR: Three engineering students, studying in Bengaluru, had a harrowing experience when a night-time trekking trip to Brahmagiri Hill went horribly wrong. The students, who wanted to trek the hill, located near the popular Nandi Hills tourist spot, to get a glimpse of the sunrise, lost their way and spent a night in the cold. One of the students slipped while climbing and fell around ten feet and sustained injuries.

The banned trek, which follows one of the oldest paths up to the top of the hill, was chosen by the students who started their journey in the night on Friday and reached the hills in an autorickshaw around 10pm. All three, from Bihar and Haryana, are students at an engineering college on Kanakpura Road.

Halfway up the hill, they lost sight of the trekking path and were disoriented. After one of them was injured, the other two carried him to safety and then used their phones to call their friends to inform them of their plight. Alerted by the trekkers, the friends then informed the police who along with the fire and emergency services team and local villagers, finally rescued them around noon on Saturday.

According to Chikkaballapur SP Karthick Reddy, the three students, identified as Insu Somani, Prakar Kumar and Deepansu, could speak only English and Hindi and took information about the trekking route from local villagers. “The teams contacted them on their cell phones and even asked them to post WhatsApp images of their point to help identify it. After rescue, they were let go with a stern warning,” Reddy said.

Around 20 villagers participated in the search along with the police and rescue teams. At one point during the search, the villagers rightly guessed the exact point from where the students would have diverged from the trekking path. Taking the same diversion themselves, the rescuers plodded through the vegetation blowing whistles. Eventually, the students heard them and shouted back and waved their hands to guide the rescuers to their location.