Mountaineering teams in dispute over Mount Everest ‘summit certificates’

Dipendra Paude, spokesman for Nepal’s
tourism industry which controls access to Everest, said that a committee of
inquiry has been formed by the government to establish the truth.

“Some disputes have come and our ministry has now formed an inquiry
committee. There were two groups from Pune in India and they are accusing
each other of not summiting Everest,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

The government ordered the inquiry after a group of Sherpas, who guide
climbers to the summit, wrote to the culture and tourism ministry to
complain that all three climbers had applied for ‘summit certificates’
issued by the Nepal Ministry Tourism but only one of them had been
successful and paid the usual ‘summit bonus’ to the Sherpas.

“I was also climbing Mount Everest on May 19 – the same day they were,
but only one member from the group reached the peak,” Sherpa Pemba
Rinhzing wrote to the committee.

According to Ganesha Sharma, acting spokesman for the Everest Summit
Association Sherpas, the Sanstha group had submitted two photographs showing
Anand Bansode and Sagar Palkar at the summit, but he said the committee is
now investigating claims that the pictures are fake.

The Giripremi group had submitted six photographs in support of its climbers
claims, which were accepted by the Nepal government.

“The other group, Sanstha, they brought two photographs but they were
photoshopped. They were faked photographs and the government is now an
investigation … The committee itself said the photographs are fake and it
has become a big issue now,” Mr Sharma said.

Sanstha’s base camp manager, Kushal Desmukh, denied any photographs had been
tampered with and insisted all three of his colleagues had scaled the
summit.

“We heard that they have made these allegations but we don’t know why
they are acting like that. One of their climbers did not have a permit but
he climbed to the summit,” he said.

A spokesman for Giripremi said he was aware of a dispute between the two
groups but declined to comment.

: Police in Nepal are investigating the murder of a Belgian woman whose body
was found decapitated on June 14 below a hiking trail in the country’s
Langtang National Park, close to the Tibet border.

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