Nepal bans three Indian climbers after they fake Mount Everest summit

Nepal has banned three Indian mountain climbers for six years after they faked Mount Everest summit. Issuing a stern warning to other climbers, the Nepali administration revoked the Everest Summit certificates of Narender Singh Yadav and Seema Rani Goswami along with their team leader Naba Kumar Phukon. Both Yadav and Goswami had falsely claimed that they had reached the apex of the world’s highest peak in 2016 and that Nepal’s tourism department had certified their feat.

However, last year, when Yadav was slated to win India’s prestigious Tenzing Norgay Adventure Award, Indian mountaineers and media erupted in outrage, sharing analyses of Yadav’s photographic evidence of the 2016 ascent that pointed to the photos being altered. It was then that the prestigious honour was retracted from Yadav and an investigation into the same begun. In the aftermath, it was found that both Yadav and Goswami had faked their peak summit.

Others fined

The two climbers and their team leader Naba Kumar Phukon have been banned from climbing Nepal’s mountains for six years, starting retroactively from May 2016. In addendum, Seven Summit Treks, which organized the expedition, has been fined 50,000 Nepali rupees (US $450) and their supporting Sherpa has been fined 10,000 Nepali rupees (US $85).

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The Mount Everest summit is the highest achievement in the lives of mountain climbers, many of whom spend their entire lives training and attempting to scale the peak. Recently, a new study revealed that the success rate of climbing the world's tallest peak Mount Everest has doubled in the last three decades. However, the death rate for climbers remained unchanged at around 1 per cent since 1990. The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE which analysed the success and death rates for all first-time climbers who were allowed to climb the peak during the period of 2006 to 2019. The researchers found that the number of climbers on Mount Everest has rapidly increased in recent years. 

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