2 volunteers die saving eagle trapped by manja in Ahmedabad

Two volunteers working for the 'Save the Birds' campaign of the organisation, Sanjivani, were electrocuted to death on Friday while trying to save an eagle in the Sahibaug area of Ahmedabad city. A local person received serious burn injuries when he tried to pull the two volunteers to safety.

The bird had got entangled in kite-string and was hanging from a tree when the two 18-year-old volunteers - Akash Rajput and Shambhu Desai - tried to free it with a 40-ft metal pipe. As luck would have it, the pipe came in contact with a high-tension wire of the railways passing at about 10 feet from the tree. Around 25,000 kilowatts of power surged down the pole and coursed through the bodies of the two youths killing them instantly.

A local resident, Chhagan Marwadi, sustained severe burn injuries when he tried to pull the two volunteers away from the pipe to which they appeared to be stuck after it touched the
high-tension wire.

Rajput and Desai used to work as volunteers with Sanjivani during Uttarayan every year to save birds in distress. For the last 6 years, they had been working with the organisation which is run by one, Rajesh Panchal, from his home in Nani Hamam ni Pol at Ghee Kanta. Both Rajput and Desai lived with their families in the same Pol.