Indian Police Couple Accused Of Faking Mount Everest Climb

A husband and wife police duo who claimed to have scaled Mt. Everest on 23 May have had their story challenged. The two police constables from Maharashtra claimed they were the first Indian couple to scale Mount Everest during a press conference on 5 June. Dinesh and Tarkeshwari Rathod, both aged 30, are accused by fellow mountaineers of faking and stealing photos to suggest that they reached the summit of 8,848-meter high Mt. Everest. Metro reports: Some have alleged that the Rathods, both police officers from Pune might not have made it to the top. An investigation by BuzzFeed India alleges one of the photographs that Dinesh uploaded to his Facebook is actually just a cropped version of an image from a mountaineering website. And since the article was published, another climber has come forward to accuse the couple of stealing pictures from his Everest climb. Other images provided to media by the couple, they are wearing red climbing gear (as above). But other images show them wearing completely different outfits – and given the extreme weather conditions it’s fairly unlikely for climbers to have an outfit change half way to the peak. Satyarup Siddhanta, from Bangalore in India, alleges the [...]