Feb. 1: At least 13 undergraduate students of a Pune college, 10 of them girls, were swept away today into the sea during high tide, turning into a tragedy what was meant to be a picnic away from home.
Five girls had been rescued and 13 bodies fished out off the beach in Murud, around 140km south of Mumbai in Maharashtra's Raigad district, by this evening, police said, adding a male student was still missing and the search was on for him.
The students were part of a group of 116 from Abeda Inamdar Senior College of Arts, Science and Commerce - run by a private trust called Maharashtra Cosmopolitan Education Society (MCES) - who had gone in three buses to the beach around 150km away along with eight teachers and some support staff. The students, aged between 18 and 20, were from Pune and neighbouring areas.
The beach and the nearby Murud-Janjira Fort, built by Shivaji, are popular tourist destinations.
According to the police and local sources, around 20 students had stepped into the sea around 3.30pm, unaware of the high tide. Some locals were quoted by regional channels as saying the students probably slipped and drowned as the tide pulled them away from the shore into the deep waters.
The students in the group had got scattered and, perhaps, did not realise the lurking danger when they stepped into the waters, an onlooker told a local channel.
The parents have demanded an inquiry and action against the teachers who were accompanying the students on the trip.
P.A. Inamdar, the president of the society that runs the college, was quoted by news agency IANS as saying the students who had gone on the excursion were from the first, second and third years of the Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) and BCA (Computer Applications) courses . PTI quoted Inamdar as claiming that the beach had no lifeguards.
"We are shocked by this tragedy. We are making all efforts to help the students and their families with the help of the local villagers and the police," Inamdar said.
In Pune, angry parents gathered outside the office of the college, waiting for information about their children. "My son had called me to say he was safe," the father of one of the students in the group, Mohammed Hayat, told a local channel.
An Indian navy spokesperson said in Mumbai that the coast guard had received information around 4pm that 15 to 18 students had been swept away on the Murud beach, following which a search operation was launched.
The coast guard deployed speedboats and a chopper while the police sent their divers in the combined rescue operation.
Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis expressed shock. "Extremely saddened & shocked to know about the Murud incident where 14 students lost their lives," PTI quoted Fadnavis as saying in a tweet. However, a list issued by the college late this evening confirmed 13 deaths.
