By Binod Ghimire and Moncho Torres

Dinesh and Tarakeshwari Rathod claimed to be the first Indian couple to scale Mount Everest and even had photographs to prove it, but now they face a 10-year mountaineering ban in Nepal as they have been found to have used altered images and never actually reached the peak.

“We have recommended the Tourism Ministry to take appropriate actions against the couple,” the Department of Tourism’s Director Sudarshan Prasad Dhakal told EFE after it was found out that they produced doctored photographs showing them at the summit.

Now, after the department’s petition to the ministry, a three-member team has been created to investigate the matter and submit their conclusions by the end of the month.

The couple, who are police officers in the western Indian city of Pune, allegedly used pictures of other mountaineers who had climbed the world’s highest peak and morphed themselves into it using computer software.

According to the Indian officers, they reached the summit on May 23 and a week later jubilantly announced their feat at a press conference in Kathmandu a week later.

“We had committed that we would not give birth to a child until we climb Mount Everest. With pride now, we want to become parents,” Tarakeshwari had said, according to India’s IANS news agency.

However, they did not count upon the possibility of the actual person whose picture was used, Indian national Satyarup Siddhantha, to discover the hoax and report them to the authorities in India and Nepal.

Another eight climbers also lodged complaints against them on finding more inconsistencies in the “very suspicious” story of the police couple, according to a document submitted to the authorities, to which EFE had access.

“The picture of the Rathods with their Down suit and oxygen was most likely taken either at the base camp or a studio, and was meticulously cropped using Photoshop and pasted onto the summit,” the document notes.

One of the complainants, Surendra Shelke, explained to EFE that one of the inconsistencies that made him suspicious was that the couple claimed to have reached the peak at 6.25am local time, whereas the height of the sun and the shadow indicated “that it must have been 11 or 12.”

According to Nepal Tourism Board officer Gyanendra Shrestha, the couple also managed to get the backing of two of the Sherpas or mountain guides to endorse their claims.

“We have found that the couple, with the support of the Sherpas guiding them to the peak, presented fake credentials to get the certificate (of having climbed Everest) without reaching to the peak,” Shrestha told EFE.

Dinesh and Tarakeshwari, if found guilty by the final investigation by the Tourism Ministry, could be banned from entering Nepal for five years, receive a 10-year ban on undertaking any mountainous expedition in the country, and have their certificates of having climbed Everest cancelled.

Since the beginning of the climbing season on May 1 – after the devastating earthquake in Nepal on April 25 last year killed nearly 9,000 people including 19 mountaineers who were swept away by an avalanche – at least 400 climbers have successfully scaled Mount Everest, according to the Department of Tourism. EFE

Kathmandu/New Delhi, Jul 17 (EFE)