The Dept. of Tourism, Govt. of Nepal, seems to have turned deaf to all but the rustle of dollar bills and blind to all but the figures on a cheque.
How else can one explain the total disregard for and the absence of any neighbourly respect that they have shown to the repeated requests from the Ministry of External Affairs, Govt. of India, who asked them to investigate the tragic circumstances that killed three Indians on Everest during the spring of 2016.
Of the four Indian "clients" of Loben Agency, three perished high on Everest and a lone lady barely made it back alive with frost bitten fingers.
Dream Wanderlust is not only the first to investigate and exclusively publish the details of the tragedy, it also exposed the blatant attempts at a cover-up indulged in by the Agencies, the Sherpas and their well wishers, the Leader, the Liason Officer and, as it now presumably seems, even by the Dept. of Tourism, Govt. of Nepal.
India asks Nepal to investigate Everest Tragedy 2016, An Unfinished Story, An Avoidable Tragedy
Having taken due cognizance of these reports the Ministry of External Affairs, Govt. of India, gave due weightage to the pleas of the lone survivor Sunita Hazra and the widow of the late Gautam Ghosh, to initiate investigations and so requested the Govt. of Nepal to do so.
The first official request had been made in October 2017,and having got no response, repeated requests have again been sent to the Govt. of Nepal to give these investigations "highest consideration."
"We have already sent five reminders to the highest level of the concerned ministries. But, no response is received from them till now. However, we will keep reminding them to respond," an official from Indian Embassy at Kathmandu said to Dream Wanderlust yesterday.
The deafening silence from the Dept. of Tourism, Govt. of Nepal defies reason, unless presumably they are also involved in the cover-up operation and also presumably because the death of three ordinary Indian civilians on Everest, where people anyway perish each year, is unlikely to strain diplomatic relations between neighbors.
What had initially been an attempt at 'suggestio falsi' is now being buttressed by an attempt at 'suppressio veri', compounding the human element of the tragedy, and sullying further the already polluted snows of Sagarmatha.
