PONDA: The Forest Department personnel on Saturday evening rescued several tourists, who were left stranded in a forest on their return journey after visiting the famous Dudhsagar waterfall as the river got flooded following heavy rains.
It is learnt that after their visit to the waterfall, on their return journey, the jeep operators experienced difficulties to cross the Dudhsagar River, which got flooded due to heavy rains. However, the Forest Department personnel managed to get the tourists out of the forest through an alternate route towards Mollem.
The fallout of the incident prompted the Forest Department to impose a temporary ban on jeep operators from ferrying tourists to the waterfall on account of heavy rainfall.
Since Sunday, the forest personnel did not open the gate to jeep operators to ferry tourists to the Dudhsagar waterfall citing reasons the site being a world famous tourist destination and in the event of any untoward incident due to the river flooding could earn it a bad reputation.
