Birthday of Telangana student turns tragic, four drown in lake

Birthday celebrations turned into tragedy as four students of a college drowned in a lake in the Suryapet district of Telangana on Wednesday. The incident occurred at ‘Pedda Cheruvu’, a lake near Kodad town.

According to the police, a group of 20 diploma students of a private college had gone to Veerabhadra Temple to celebrate birthday of 20-year-old Chakrala Praveen.

Four of them, including the birthday boy Praveen, drowned while trying to save one of their friends, Sameer, who had fallen into the lake accidentally while washing his hands.

Though other locals also stepped in on hearing the commotion and pulled out the four students, it was already too late and they had died.

The deceased were identified as Sameer, Praveen, Bhavani Prasad and Mahendra Simha, all aged 20.

The police said that a case had been registered and the bodies of the deceased were shifted to the government hospital at Kodad for a post-mortem before they were handed over to their respective families.

The students were reported to have been pursuing a Diploma Course in Civil Engineering at the Anurag Engineering College at Ananthagiri near Kodad.

This tragic incident comes less than a month after a 15-year-old boy from Hyderabad, who had gone for a swim at a local swimming pool, drowned and died. The boy, after a swim with his friends, had gone back to the pool that was unattended by any lifeguards.

In the CCTV footage near the pool, Khaja, who did not know how to swim, could be seen making attempts to swim. There was no one near the pool when the incident took place. He swam towards the deeper end of the pool, which is 7 feet in depth, when he drowned, the police said.

IANS inputs