Two killed in car rally

Two participants in the Raid de Himalayas rally were killed on Friday night when their vehicle skidded off the road and rolled down the mountainside at Drabla, in Shimla.

Their bodies have been recovered and sent for post-mortem, district police chief Pradeep Kumar said.

The mishap occurred when N L choudhary and Jasvinder Singh, driving car number 24, were negotiating a curve, he added.

The drivers, both from Himachal Pradesh, were on the return leg of the rally from Kargil to Shimla.

The rally was flagged off from Shimla, for Kargil, on October 6.

With the deaths of the two drivers, the number of rallyists who perished on the route rose to three.

On October 9, John Mark James of the United Kingdom was killed, when he was thrown off his high-speed motorcycle in Ladakh, a rally organiser said.

The 25 motorcycles and 24 cars that participated in the rally, traversed through rugged roads and various mountain passes including the Rohtang Pass (13,050 feet), Kunzum Pass (14,800 feet) and Tanglang La (17,500 feet) to reach Kargil.

UNI