A college picnic to the beach turned into a tragedy yesterday when at least 14 students drowned off Maharashtra’s coast after they went swimming, police and officials said.
The tragedy was the latest drowning incident in India, where many people are unable to swim and lax safety standards mean beaches are often without lifeguards.
Dozens of students from Pune were on an excursion to Murud beach in the Raigad district when disaster struck.
“A total of 155 students from Pune went to Murud main beach and some of them went swimming around 3.30pm,” assistant inspector of Raigad police Arvind Patil said.
“Fourteen students are dead due to drowning. The victims were all aged between 19 and 23,” Patil said, adding that 10 women and four men had died.
The victims were enrolled at Abeda Inamdar College, an arts, science and commerce institute in Pune.
P A Inamdar, a trustee at the college, said that the students had been on a picnic to Murud, which had been arranged by the educational institute.
“They were on an excursion and must have gone into the sea against the advice of the teachers. They were swept away by the tides,” Inamdar said.
Inamdar said all other students had been accounted for while Patil also said everyone else on the excursion was “safe” after a massive rescue operation involving the coast guard.
Murud sits on the Konkan coast, which has dozens of beaches popular with locals who prefer it to the internationally renowned tourist state of Goa.
Murud is around 140km south of Mumbai.
Inamdar said between eight and ten college staff had accompanied the students on their trip and he had been told that there hadn’t been any lifeguards on duty at the time of the tragedy.
“I don’t think there were lifeguards on the beach. That is the basic problem,” he said.
Local people speculated that some of the students ventured too far out into the waters and were probably caught by the tidal currents, which swept them away.
“We are shocked by this tragedy. We are making all efforts to help the students and their families with the help of local villagers and police. A team of our trustees has already left Pune for Raigad for rendering further assistance,” Inamdar said.
He said the process of informing their families was underway and 10 ambulances have been sent for relief work.
Meanwhile, thousands of tourists and locals gathered at the beach where the bodies of the victims were lined up as wailing parents and stunned relatives rushed to the college campus in Pune or to Murud.
Yesterday’s drowning comes a few weeks after a man drowned off Mumbai trying to save a girl who fell into the sea while taking a selfie.
The girl and two friends fell off rocks into the Arabian Sea while clicking photos of themselves.
A passerby, 37-year-old Ramesh Walanju, jumped in and helped save the two friends but was washed away by the choppy waters and his body was found floating in a nearby creek. The girl is still missing.
In February 2014, 29 people died when a passenger boat capsized in the eastern state of Odisha.
A month prior to that incident, 21 people were killed when a tourist boat capsized off the Andaman Islands.