Despite deploying specialised sniffer dogs and advanced equipment, rescue teams struggle to locate any signs of life beneath the estimated 25-30 feet of mud and boulders that engulfed the area. Operations intensified over the weekend, with four heavy machinery units deployed since Saturday to clear massive stones and debris from the affected Dharali area. State Disaster Response Force personnel and other relief teams are also conducting painstaking manual searches, sifting through treacherous muck in a desperate bid to find missing villagers. The exact number of individuals trapped remains tragically unclear. While official government figures currently state six fatalities and 16 persons missing in Dharali, local residents paint a far grimmer picture.Villagers assert the true number of missing exceeds 60, raising serious concerns about the disaster’s true scale. A local community leader, requesting anonymity due to the situation’s sensitivity, expressed the community’s profound despair. “We believe far more people are buried than the official count,” the leader stated with a heavy heart. “Every passing hour diminishes hope, but we cannot abandon our loved ones.”
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