NAVI MUMBAI, May 27 -- A combination of mobile phone tracking, thermal drone surveillance and painstaking ground search amid steep slopes and dense forests helped rescuers trace the SUV carrying eight men from Satara that had plunged nearly 1,200 feet into a gorge in the Ambenali Ghat section near Mahabaleshwar on Sunday, killing all occupants, police officers aware of the matter told Hindustan Times. As reported by HT on Tuesday, all eight bodies were retrieved by Monday night, the rescue operation lasting more than 20 hours since the police were informed about the group being untraceable on Sunday night. Multiple teams participated in the operation, including personnel from the Poladpur police station, volunteers from trekkers' and environmental groups and local villagers. The eight young men, most of them in their 20s and residents of Satara, had travelled to Dapoli-Harne for a weekend trip in a black Scorpio. The group left Dapoli beach for Satara around 2.30am on Sunday and were expected to reach home by 9.30am, but did not do so till evening. Their family members contacted the Poladpur police around 7pm on Sunday, after failing to reach them over the phone for several hours, and being informed by the local police that their phones were traced to the Poladpur area. Police officers involved in the rescue operation said they got the first lead from two mobile phones of the victims that remained switched on for several hours. But the lead was conflicting, as the location of one mobile phone was traced to Kamthe village, while another was located near the Ambenali Ghat stretch. "Mobile tower signals in the Mahabaleshwar and Poladpur ghat sections frequently overlap. That's probably why the mobiles were traced to two different locations," Anand Ravade, assistant police inspector, Poladpur police station, told HT. Search teams first rushed to Kamthe village, but found no trace of the black Scorpio. The teams then travelled for more than an hour towards Ambenali and began physically checking accident-prone points along the ghat. "We checked for damaged barriers and broken retaining walls, and scanned all major accident-prone spots, but there were no visible signs that a vehicle had plunged into the valley," Ravade said. With no breakthrough for several hours, rescue teams deployed thermal drones to spot the wreckage. Around 4am on Monday, a dark-coloured vehicle was spotted deep inside the valley - but it turned out to be a Honda City and not the missing Scorpio. "Around 6am on Monday, rescue teams found a broken side mirror from the Scorpio along with a mobile phone near the edge of the valley, confirming the accident spot," Ravade said. Soon after, rescue personnel descended into the gorge and located the mangled Scorpio hundreds of feet below. "The actual crash site was almost impossible to detect from the roadside as the SUV had crossed over a high mud embankment before plunging into the gorge," Ravade told HT. Members of the rescue team said the terrain posed extraordinary challenges. Massive boulders, slippery rocky surfaces, dense vegetation and steep inclines made movement extremely dangerous, while bee hives in the area further complicated the operation. "The first two bodies were retrieved by around 10am on Monday. However, lifting the remaining bodies vertically up the cliff face was impossible due to the terrain and the depth of the gorge. The bodies had also begun decomposing," said Sagar Dahimkar, founder of the Sahayadri Vanyajiv Rakshanarth Samajik Sanstha (SVRSS) who participated in the operation along with other members of the environmental group. Dahimkar described the operation as one of the toughest rescue missions undertaken by the team, where they had to descend into the valley and transport the bodies across nearly two kilometres of treacherous terrain. "It took nearly four hours to recover each body as rescuers had to navigate huge rocks and steep slopes while carrying the victims manually," Dahimkar said. The rescue began around 3am on Monday and continued till nearly 11.30pm, he said....