In a tragic incident, six boys, including five school students, drowned while bathing in River Amaravathi at Dharapuram in Tiruppur district on Monday.
According to the police, the victims M. Amirtha Krishnan, 18, R. Sridhar, 17, R. Ranjith, 20, T. Yuvan, 19, T. Mohan, 17, and M. Chakkaravarman, 18, hailing from Annamalai Garden locality in Iduvai near Tiruppur, were part of a group on pilgrimage to the Muniyappan temple in Mambarai near Oddanchatram in Dindigul district.
Around 30 residents of the locality had gone to the temple in two vehicles on Monday. While returning from the temple, 13 boys from the group travelled in a vehicle and the remaining 17 elders boarded the second vehicle. Around 4 p.m., the boys stopped the vehicle near Athupalam and eight of them — Ranjith, a college student, and the rest studying in various classes — decided to take a dip in the Amaravathi.
However, soon after getting into the river, they screamed for help. The other boys, who were inside the parked vehicle, managed to rescue two of them, Jeeva and Saran. The six others had gone far into the river and eventually drowned, the police said.
“None of the boys knew swimming and the river’s depth was around 15 feet at that spot,” said S. Jayachandran, Station Officer of Dharapuram Fire Station who led the operation to retrieve the bodies following an alert from the Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Services control room in Chennai at 4.20 p.m. Around 10 fire and rescue services personnel from Dharapuram Fire Station were involved in the operation that lasted for around an hour. Six bodies were recovered by 5.30 p.m., he said.
The bodies were handed over to the Dharapuram police, who sent them to the local Government Hospital for autopsy.
Deputy Superintendent of Police (Dharapuram Sub-division) R. Dhanarasu, who visited the spot, told The Hindu that the Tiruppur District Police will take steps to prevent such deaths in coordination with the Public Works Department.
