Secret outing gone horribly wrong: Couple spends night in jungle after falling into valley, makes no call for help
A couple underwent hours of ordeal when they accidentally fell into a valley near Pavagadh Hill in Gujarat. The night which started as a “secret outing”, ended as an overnight stay in a jungle infested with snakes and leopards in an area even the locals considered as forbidden.
The couple, who hail from Kadi-Kalol in Gandhinagar district, went for an outing near Pavagadh on Thursday evening when the incident took place.
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Police said that the couple, in their 30s, “could not muster courage” to seek help the entire night as they did not want their affair to be known after what was described as a “secret outing gone awry”, The Indian Express reported.
“The couple first called the ambulance in the morning at around 7 am. They did not seek help the entire night out of fear of being caught together and their affair being known even as their phones were with them. In fact, they stayed in the forest for the night, unaware that it is infested with leopards and snakes,” sub-Inspector Rajdeep Jadeja of Pavagadh police station was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.
The emergency paramedic services called the Pavagadh police station on Friday morning. A team immediately set out on a search operation to find the man and the woman. As the couple was non-local, they were unable to share their exact location.
“The paramedics approached the police to launch a search. We continued to ask them for geographical signs from the area to locate them. It turned out to be the forest area behind the Helical Stepwell, which is also close to abandoned mines and is known as a forbidden area for locals too,” Jadeja said.
After a three-hour search, they were found in a condition in which they could not even move. The rescue team suspected that the two had suffered fractures from the fall into the valley.
“They were lucky they came out alive as they were stuck in a thorny bush near the pond,” the police officials said.
The two were referred to Vadodara’s SSG Hospital for further treatment. Jadeja added that the couple were “not keen” on contacting their families. “There is no case against them. They were not in a condition to argue but they were unwilling to inform their relatives as it appeared that they belonged to one family. We learned that the woman is married and a mother to three children; we did not insist on contacting their relatives. They would do it on their own from the hospital in Vadodara,” he said, IE reported.
