KATHMANDU, Nepal – The photos seemed to show them at the top of the world, the summit of Mount Everest, and Nepalese tourism authorities presented the two climbers with coveted certificates stating that they had reached the highest peak in the world.
But veteran climbers said they saw a lie in the photographic details: an oxygen mask without a tube connecting it to an oxygen tank, without reflections of snow or mountains in a man’s sunglasses and faint flags in a place known for tearing winds . The photos were fake, they said, and so was the climb.
Now authorities in Nepal are trying to ban the two Indian climbers who sent the photos of climbing Mount Everest and other peaks in Nepal for 10 years, after a government investigation concluded that they had tampered with the images that showed they had reached the summit when not really.
Climbers, Narender Singh Yadav and Seema Rani Goswami, claimed that they had reached the top of the mountain in 2016, although at the time local Sherpas and others questioned this.
Even so, Nepalese tourism authorities gave them Everest certificates after the two climbers sent photos that the Nepalese government now says are fake.
Mr. Yadav and Mrs. Goswami, who were not especially known before this controversy, come from a northern Indian state, Haryana, which has rewarded successful climbers in the past.
“Their claims to the summit of Everest could not be established,” said Pradip Kumar Koirala, a Nepalese tourism official, on Monday. Mr Koirala, who led the duo’s investigation, which started in August, added: “We recommend measures against them.”
Mr. Yadav said in an interview that he has all the necessary evidence to show that he has reached the top of the mountain. He filed a police complaint against his guide in Nepal, who he said was deceiving people by denying that he climbed the peak. Ms. Goswami did not answer questions asked by The New York Times.
Nepal, one of the poorest nations in Asia and the site of most Everest climbs, has been striving to eradicate fake mountains. But in recent years, the number of people falsifying Everest statements has increased dramatically, from a few decades ago to dozens each year.
Investigations have been rare in Nepal, a country hungry for every growing dollar it can get. He has issued more and more licenses to Everest in recent years, sometimes leading climbers to push and push, creating dangerous human traffic on the roof of the world.
For climbing the highest mountain in the world, Indians often receive national awards. If they already work for the government, they sometimes receive promotions and benefits for life. Expedition organizers say the flow of climbers from India has increased in recent years, as the advantages have become better known.
But it was the prospect of that kind of recognition that undid Mr. Yadav’s and Ms. Goswami’s claims.
In August, Mr. Yadav was chosen as one of the winners of the prestigious Indian mountaineering award. But Indian and Sherpa climbers who said they saw Yadav descending to Everest base camp without reaching the summit began posting comments online questioning the government’s intention.
The Indian government has decided to suspend the sentence pending an investigation. India’s sports ministry, which awards the award, said it was investigating allegations that Yadav had tampered with the photos and sought clarification from Nepal’s tourism authorities.
The Nepalese government was forced to open an investigation. Veteran climbers and many climbers questioned Yadav’s climbing credentials and challenged the details of his photos.
The investigative committee questioned Yadav’s team leader, Naba Kumar Phukon. In an interview, Phukon said he told the panel that Yadav and Goswami never reached the summit of Everest.
“I don’t know how he got the certificate without any photo of the dome,” said Phukon. The company that organized the couple’s trip said they had “no role in transforming the photos.”
Nepal’s most severe penalty for false claims is to ban climbers from all mountains in the country. It does not impose fines on them.
These claims have become a recurring problem. In 2016, two Indian police officers, a husband and wife couple, were fired from their jobs after an investigation found that they had faked the climb to Everest. The Indian couple said they had reached the lifelong goal of reaching the summit, but Nepalese officials later said the climbers had tampered with photos that appeared to show a successful climb.
In 2019, the tourism ministry in Nepal removed at least five names from its list of people who climbed the peak of Everest after questions about their climbs were raised. The investigation of these charges is still ongoing.
Climbers in India welcomed Nepal’s footsteps against Yadav and Mrs Goswami. “This will discourage the fake ones,” said Satyarup Siddhanta, an Indian climber. “If the Nepalese government develops a web portal and publishes all the photos of the summit, it will help to detect counterfeiters.”
Nepalese officials said their investigation found that Yadav and Goswami had reached an altitude of more than 27,000 feet, about 2,000 feet before the summit. This height is known as the “death zone”, where the air is so thin that even with the bottled oxygen, the brain and the body begin to fail.
Their guide warned them that their oxygen supply was depleted and that they were not physically able to reach the summit, and they were rescued, the investigation found. Lakpa Sherpa, a rescuer who was part of the operation, said that both Yadav and Goswami were running out of supplemental oxygen and that their condition was rapidly deteriorating.
Bhadra Sharma reported from Kathmandu and Sameer Yasir from Srinagar, Kashmir.