Rescuers search for the drowned boys at Tarkara pump house dam in Rourkela on Saturday. Picture by Uttam Kumar Pal

Rourkela, May 24: Four teenage boys drowned while bathing in the Brahmani river on the outskirts of Rourkela today.

Sources said four Plus Two students and an engineering student had gone to the Brahmani river at Tarkara pump house for a bath this morning. Two of them slipped and got pulled into deep water by a powerful current. The others tried to save them and drowned in the process.

The deceased have been identified as Gyana Mohanty, Anurag Das, Kunal Soni (all Plus Two students of Deepika English Medium School) and Soumya Ranjan Barik, a final-year student of Odisha Engineering College, Bhubaneswar.

Local residents managed to rescue the fifth boy, Priyabrata Pati, of Municipal College.

The five boys, it is learnt, had informed their families that they were going to play cricket but reached the Tarkara pump house dam from where Rourkela Steel Plant lifts water for its plant. Because of the rocky topography, the place is considered dangerous.

A fire brigade team later went to the spot and fished out bodies of the four students.

Six missing

Six persons have gone missing at Machkund in Koraput after the boat they were on capsized.

They were all returning from the Muncipat local haat in Andhra Pradesh. They were all residents of Parajabada.