NEW DELHI, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- Indian police have sacked a cop couple from the force for faking Mount Qomolangma climb last year.
Dinesh Rathod and his wife Tarkeshwari Rathod, both constables with the Maharashtra Police in the western state, had last year claimed to be the first Indian couple to have climbed Mount Qomolangma, the world's highest mountain.
Indian police started to question the couple's claims and started a probe after Nepal imposed a 10-year mountaineering ban on them following a Nepalese government investigation that proved that photographs purporting to show the pair at the top of the Mountain were fake.
The couple faked about the Qomolangma ascent, morphed the photographs, shared misleading information and while doing this, brought disrepute to the Maharashtra Police department and did not report to duty, Sahebrao Patil, India's Additional Police Commissioner, told the media.
He added: "Based on the inquiry, we dismissed the couple from the department."
In fact, suspicions were aroused last year because of the time lag between the day the Rathods claimed to have reached the summit and a news conference they held to announce their achievement.
It was suspected that the couple could not possibly have reached the summit so soon after they were seen to have arrived at the base camp, and that the photos appeared to show them in two different sets of clothes and boots while on the climb.
The couple have denied any wrongdoing.
