Uttarkashi trek mystery deepens: Missing MBA student Babita Pandey’s name found on forged permit; still untraced after 5 days

UTTARKASHI: The search for Babita Pandey, 24, an MBA student from Nainital who went missing from Ghoi campsite on the Dayara Bugyal trek around midnight on May 29, has exposed an alleged fake-permit racket in which her name and those of her two co-trekkers were pasted on an expired physical permit to bypass mandatory registration, environmental fees and daily trail-cap checks, officials said.

Babita, a resident of Ramnagar, has meanwhile remained untraced for the fifth day despite a search operation by police, forest department, State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Special Operations Group (SOG), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), disaster management teams, drones and dog squads. Around 50 Army and ITBP personnel were also added to the operation on the district administration’s request, taking the joint search strength to nearly 150.

District tourism development officer K K Joshi said Babita’s name did not exist on Explore Uttarkashi, the tourism department’s mandatory single-window portal for trek registration and permits. “There is no trekking registration or permit in Babita Pandey’s name on the portal. During verification, we found that the agency had fabricated a new permit by altering names on an old one. When the QR code was scanned, it showed the names of the original trekkers,” Joshi said.

Officials said the names of Babita and her co-trekkers, Harmanpal Singh and Harmanpreet Singh, were pasted over a previously issued permit and shown at checkpoints as valid authorisation. The fraud surfaced after the QR code on the permit mapped to earlier trekkers, not the group that had gone to Dayara Bugyal.

For the Dayara Bugyal trek, every tourist must pay Rs 100 as registration fee and Rs 100 as environmental fee, while permission is limited to around 150 trekkers per day to control pressure on the high-altitude meadow. Officials said forged permits cause loss of govt revenue, allow agencies to send extra groups after the daily carrying capacity had been reached, and weaken emergency tracking because rescue teams depend on digital check-ins to verify trekker movement.

A tourism department official said the alleged fraud complicated the initial search. “If a trekker is not registered digitally, the administration does not immediately know that the person is on the mountain. In such cases, rescue teams lose precious time in verifying who entered the trail, through which agency, and under what permit,” the official said.

The tourism department suspended the registration of the trekking agency with immediate effect. Officials said further action would follow after a detailed inquiry into whether the agency had used similar forged permits earlier and whether more groups had been sent to trekking routes without proper registration.

Police registered an FIR against the two men who accompanied Babita on the trek and started questioning them. SP Kamlesh Upadhyay said the case was being probed from all angles, while CO Uttarkashi Janak Singh Panwar was personally leading the search.

Dayara Bugyal, one of Uttarkashi’s most popular high-altitude meadows, sits above 11,000ft and is usually approached from Raithal or Barsu. Though many operators market it as a beginner-friendly trek, the route passes through forests, steep patches and weather-sensitive terrain where delayed reporting can reduce rescue efficiency.

The incident has raised wider concerns about trekking safety in border and high-altitude areas of Uttarakhand.