Eight people were killed and two others injured after a Max vehicle carrying around 10 passengers fell into a deep gorge near Nail village in Uttarakhand’s Tehri Garhwal district on event date 2026-04-23.
District disaster management officials said the vehicle lost control on the Chamba-Koti motor road in the Chamba development block and plunged nearly 300 metres. The injured passengers, identified as Uttam, 30, from Lostu Badiyargarh village and Ankit, 22, from Nelchami village in Ghansali, were reported to be out of danger and were receiving treatment at the district hospital in Baurari.
According to district disaster management officer Brijesh Bhatt, the passengers were residents of Ghansali returning from Rishikesh after performing funeral rites. That detail gives the crash a tragic domestic context: the journey was not a commercial excursion or long-haul holiday trip, but a local return journey that ended in a fatal plunge.
Bhatt said teams from the State Disaster Response Force, the health department and local police rushed to the scene after the alert. Rescue teams from the SDRF, police and fire services worked to retrieve the bodies and evacuate the injured from the gorge. District Magistrate Nitika Khandelwal, Tehri MLA Kishore Upadhyay and Senior Superintendent of Police Shweta Choubey also reached the site and supervised the operation.
Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami expressed grief and directed the district administration to make sure the injured received prompt and appropriate treatment while rescue work continued without lapses. He also asked officials to maintain continuous monitoring of the situation and wished the injured a speedy recovery.
The accident reflects the persistent risk on mountain roads in Uttarakhand, where steep descents, narrow lanes and limited protection can turn a loss of control into a mass-casualty event. The source does not specify the exact cause of the vehicle leaving the road, and it does not say whether weather, speeding, brake failure or road conditions played a role.
What is clear is the toll: eight dead, two injured and a rescue operation that drew officials from multiple levels of government. For the families involved, the focus will now be on identifying the dead, supporting the wounded and understanding how the vehicle came to fall so far into the gorge.
Mountain-road crashes in Uttarakhand often involve a combination of steep gradients, narrow lanes and limited space for recovery once a vehicle loses control. The source does not say which of those factors mattered most here, but the depth of the fall alone shows why these incidents are so difficult to survive and so difficult to investigate quickly.
The fact that the injured were reported to be out of danger is one of the few signs of relief in an otherwise fatal story. Even so, the scene left eight dead and an entire local area waiting for answers. For investigators, the key issue will be whether the driver lost control because of a mechanical fault, a driving error or road conditions that were already dangerous.
The accident also reinforces how quickly routine travel can become a rescue operation in hill districts. A 300-metre plunge leaves little room for error and very little time for responders. The official praise for the rescue teams suggests the operation was difficult, but it also shows the state moved quickly once the vehicle was reported missing.
