Two Indian police officers who faked a successful ascent of Mount Everest last year have been sacked from the force for bringing their department into disrepute.
Dinesh and Tarakeshwari Rathod, a married couple from the western city of Pune, claimed to have conquered the 8,848m summit in May last year during a police expedition to the world’s highest peak.
They were praised briefly as the first Indian couple to reach the summit of Everest, but claims of a hoax surfaced within hours of the team’s descent from the mountain. An investigation found that photographs issued to support their summit claims had been doctored — however, it was the pictures that had not been tampered with which proved the giveaway.
One picture of the couple, purportedly