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Woman trips over rock, falls 800ft to death in Matheran

Navi Mumbai: A family vacation in the picturesque Matheran ended in a tragedy after a 33-year-old woman from Diva fell to her death from a steep cliff on Saturday afternoon. Gita Mishra fell 800 feet after stumbling upon a protruding rock at Belvedere Point around 2.30pm, while walking along the precipice.

Gita was with her husband Abhishek, daughters—Ananya (2) and Chahat (9)—and her husband’s colleague, Sachin Shukla.

They had reached Matheran on Friday.

Gita was a little ahead of the rest when she fell off. Assistant inspector Mahadev Acharekar of Matheran police station said that the five were ambling along Belvedere Point when Gita’s foot hit the rock, causing her to lose balance. One of her sandals came off and remained on the edge of the cliff while Gita rolled down the valley.

The elder daughter, who was tailing Gita, watched in horror as her mother suddenly went out of sight. The younger child was with her father and his colleague who were also within shouting distance. The police quoted the elder daughter as saying that there was nothing that Gita could have clutched on to to save herself.

Other tourists who happened to be around the spot were left unsettled by what they witnessed. Even as Gita’s family members stood by, the reality still to sink in, a tourist called up the police to report the accident. Gita’s husband then sought help from employees of a hotel located a distance from the spot, said the police.

Members of a rappelling team, Matheran Sahyadri Mitra Mandal, were called in to help in the rescue operation. About a dozen of them reached the spot around 4pm and Gita’s body was brought out about three hours later. She was taken to the local B J Hospital where she was declared “brought dead”.

The police, after speaking to the rappelling team, said she possibly landed 500 feet below on a thicket of green, before going down another 300 feet. One of the rescuers, Vaibhav Naik, said the body was “badly mutilated”. He added that the terrain from where the body was retrieved was rough and rocky.

A post-mortem examination was conducted after which the body was handed over to the family. The report points to ‘multiple injuries and fractures besides damage to the brain’. It also says that a shoulder, hand and knee were dislocated and the body “badly crushed”.

Gita was a homemaker while her husband owns a software company in Ghatkopar.

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