Nepal Bans Indian police Couple who faked reaching Everest Summit and photoshopping these images

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Indians are not very popular these days in Nepal and now there is one more reason for Indians to hang their heads in shame .

Climbing everest is no mean feat and hardly anyone who tries it makes it on their first attempt .Well this was not the case for an Indian couple Dinesh and Tarakeshwari Rathod, both said to be in their 30s, had claimed that they summited the peak of the Everest, the world's highest mountain on May 23.

But fellow climbers raised doubt on the claim of the couple, both police constables from Pune, saying their photos at the summit were manipulated.

The complainants, who have pointed out several gaping holes in the story told by the Rathods allege that the couple never made it past the base camp.

"Our suspicions were first aroused owing to the time lag between the day the Rathods claimed to have reached the summit [May 23] and their press conference announcing their achievement [June 5]," Pune-based mountaineer Surendra Shelke told a national daily.

Mr. Shelke, who has more than two decades of mountaineering experience, alleged that no one seemed to have seen the Rathods beyond the base camp. He also asserted that neither had completed the gruelling preliminary necessary for the climb.

"From the people in the team who accompanied the Rathods, we gathered that the duo had not even reached what is known as the first acclimatisation rotation before the main push to the summit — the Khumbu icefall [at 17,999 ft] — by May 10. So, there is no way they could have completed their climb by May 23 as they claimed.

Even more damning are the allegations that the photos of the conquest circulated by the couple were photoshopped.

Nepal's Tourism Ministry earlier certified their claim but later carried out an investigation, which proved to be fake.

Sudarshan Prasad Dhakal, chief of the Tourism Department of Nepal said an analysis of the photos submitted by the couple showed they had superimposed themselves and their banners on photos taken by another fellow Indian climber who summitted the 8,848-metre Mt Everest on the few days earlier.

"We sought clarification from them, but they did not cooperate in our investigation," said Dhakal.

"They have been banned for ten years and should serve as a warning for other mountaineers to follow ethics," he said.

Surely Mr and Mrs Rathod has done no one proud least of all us Indians.