Three 14-year-old boys from Chennai attending a summer camp in Pune died of drowning in the backwater of Mulshi dam when they had gone for swimming in the water on Wednesday.
One of the bodies was found by a local authority on Wednesday while other two bodies were found by the team of National Disaster Rescue Force (NDRF) on Thursday afternoon.
Danish Raja, Sarvana Kumar and Santosh Ganesh were from ECS Matriculation school in Chennai and they along with nearly 20 other students from the school had come down to Pune to attend a week-long summer camp near Mulshi dam area. It was the first day of the summer camp on Wednesday when the tragedy took place in the evening.
According to Paud police, there were four teachers with the students to attend the camp. After day's activity the students were taken to the backwater of the Mulshi dam in the evening at around 5 pm.
A senior police officer from Paud police station said, "The teacher in their statements have stated that before allowing students to enter into the water, they had gone into the water to check the depth of the water. They had also told the students to swing near the bank of the water and not to enter into deep water."
"While other students were swimming near the bank, these three students swam further towards the deep water. They were feeding some biscuits to fish and in attempt to find more fish they swam further, however they did not realise that the water was deep and they drowned," the police officer said.
When it was getting dark, all the students were asked to come out of the water but the teachers realised that these three students were missing. When they did not find them in the water anywhere, they contacted the local authorities and search operation began on Wednesday night.
According to police, they found a body of Danish on Wednesday night but the other two were still missing, hence NDRF was called on Thursday morning. A team of 26 personnel of NDRF started the search operation in the morning and managed to find the other two bodies by 12 pm. Anupam Shrivastava, commandant of fifth battalion of NDRF told DNA, "Both the bodies were found in the same vicinity where they had drowned. One body was found floating on the surface while the other body was still underwater."
