Kolkata: CM Suvendu Adhikari on Thursday met family members of the five Bankura trekkers at Andal airport and assured them of all possible support from the state govt.Rintu Mondal, Uday Ghosh, Ratan Ghosh and Tapas Bauri of Shalboni village, and Manoj Khawas of neighbouring Keshra village, went missing on Oct 29 when their team was hit by a severe snowstorm at around 4,000 metres during the Gangotri-Kedartal trek.After extensive search operations by Uttarakhand SDRF and ITBP, the bodies of four of them were recovered and flown to their villages in Bankura on the morning of Nov 8. Ratan Ghosh remains untraced.A senior district official said that on the CM’s instructions, minister in charge of minority affairs and madrasa Kshudiram Tudu handed over cheques of Rs 10,000 each to the families soon after the brief interaction. The money came from the CM’s relief fund.Adhikari had been scheduled to visit the families at their homes but could not because of a tight schedule. He left for Bhopal in the late afternoon for a meeting with Union rural development minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. He has promised to meet the families in detail on Nov 21.A 13-member team of eight trekkers, four guides and an assistant had set out from Gangotri for Kedartal on Oct 27. It ran into a snowstorm near Bhojkhadak on Oct 29, at an altitude of around 4,000 metres.
