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A Delhi-registered vehicle carrying ten people fell about 300 feet from the road into a gorge and then into the Lohit River in Anjaw district, Arunachal Pradesh.
One person died, six were rescued with injuries and three remained missing; the accident occurred in the Sarti area on the Walong-Hawai road.
Search operations were mounted by the District Disaster Management Authority with Anjaw Police, the Indian Army, the State Disaster Response Force, the district administration and local volunteers.
The Lohit is a major tributary of the Brahmaputra, rising in eastern Tibet and running about 200 km through Arunachal Pradesh before joining the main stem in Assam.
Its reddish tinge during high flow, caused by iron-rich laterite soils of the Mishmi Hills, is the origin of its name as the river of blood.
Anjaw is India's easternmost district, in Arunachal Pradesh, sharing a boundary with China to the north and lying close to the India-China-Myanmar trijunction. Its headquarters is Hawai, and the Walong-Hawai road along the Lohit valley links it to Walong further up. The valley runs through the Mishmi Hills, home to the Mishmi communities, and drains southwest into Assam where the Lohit meets the Dibang and the Dihang near Sadiya to form the Brahmaputra. Walong is also remembered as the site of the Battle of Walong in the 1962 war with China, the one sector where Indian troops mounted a counter-attack.
Dihang or Siang, Dibang and Lohit meet near Sadiya to form the Brahmaputra, a favourite prelims triple.
Fought in this same Lohit valley in the eastern sector, it was the only 1962 engagement in which Indian forces launched a counter-attack.
A Hindu pilgrimage on the lower Lohit where a large Makar Sankranti mela is held each January, sometimes called the Kumbh of the Northeast.
Steep gradients, high rainfall and young, unstable Himalayan geology make the Arunachal road network among the most accident-prone in the country.
The Lohit is called the Zayul Chu in Tibet, part of the general pattern where trans-Himalayan rivers change names at the border, as the Tsangpo becomes the Siang and then the Brahmaputra.
GS Paper 1 > Indian Geography > Drainage systems; GS Paper 3 > Disaster management
General Awareness > Indian Geography > Rivers and tributaries
A major head stream of the Brahmaputra rising in eastern Tibet as the Zayul Chu and flowing through Anjaw district and the Mishmi Hills of Arunachal Pradesh.
One of the rivers whose confluence creates a larger named river, as the Dihang, Dibang and Lohit create the Brahmaputra.
An iron and aluminium rich soil formed by intense weathering in hot, wet climates; its iron content gives the Lohit its reddish tinge in high flow.
The hill ranges of eastern Arunachal Pradesh through which the Lohit cuts, home to the Mishmi communities.