65-year-old tourist dies while visiting Lamahatta

DARJEELING,: Sixty-five-year-old Ashoke Sadhukhan, a tourist from Kolkata, died on Tuesday while touring the tourist spot of Lamahatta.

Sadhukhan, who is from Hatibagan in Kolkata, was a retired bank employee and had come to visit Darjeeling with two daughters, son-in-law and brothers.

“He had come with his family from Kolkata on October 20 for a tour of Darjeeling and had been staying at a hotel here. They were to return today with their train tickets booked for the evening. Yesterday, they had gone on a trip to different places around Darjeeling including Lamahatta where he fell sick,” said Rajesh Chauhan, deputy chairman, Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA).

“After we learnt about it our health team from Takdah Primary Health Centre reached there and with the help of others he was brought to the Darjeeling District Hospital where he was announced dead. It being late yesterday, the post-mortem could only be conducted today,” he said, adding that the GTA was helping in taking the body up to Siliguri after which the district administration had made arrangements to reach the body up to Kolkata.

Son-in-law Subrato from Howrah said, “We had come to Darjeeling to visit different tourist attractions here and yesterday we had gone to Lamahatta. We all went uphill on foot after coming out of the vehicle. My father-in-law had already started to go downhill when we were just climbing up and I told him to walk carefully. It was during this time that he fell down and became unconscious.”

“We gave him water after that as he was alive then but after we reached the hospital after two hours, the doctor declared him dead after brought dead,” he added.