Copters Begin Picking Up Hindu Pilgrims Indian Officials Criticized For Allowing Disaster, Bungling Rescue

Indian officials said Sunday that as many as 160 Hindu pilgrims and mountain guides had died of cold and hunger in the Himalayan mountains of Kashmir because of a storm and that the toll is likely to rise as rescue teams gain a fuller picture of the disaster.

After days of confusion, Indian army helicopters flew through improving weather Sunday to begin picking up survivors of the heavy rains and unseasonal snowfalls that trapped thousands of the pilgrims at altitudes as high as 15,000 feet.

There were conflicting accounts of the number of people still stranded and of the problems involved in reaching them with adequate supplies of food, blankets and warm clothing.

As the scale of the disaster became clearer, Indian officials came under fire for what survivors described as negligence in allowing the pilgrims to head into the mountains without adequate clothing and provisions and for bungling the rescue once severe weather overwhelmed the pilgrimage.

Officials blamed the pilgrims, some of whom were said to have set off on the final 27-mile section of the trek along steeply ascending mule paths almost naked, as is the tradition among some Hindu holy men.

Among the dead, officials said, were a number of sadhus, who make their pilgrimages naked except for a smearing of ash or clad only in a loincloth.

Before the disaster, senior government officials had pointed to the pilgrimage as a measure of the progress India has made in quelling a secessionist rebellion in Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only state with a Muslim majority and the focal point of a decades-old territorial dispute with Pakistan.

After attacking the Hindu pilgrims in previous years, Muslim guerrillas with bases in Pakistan gave assurances that there would be no interference this time.

The assurances appeared to have resulted in the biggest pilgrimage in years - as many as 110,000 people according to some accounts.