A 21-year-old engineering student died of complications he reportedly developed after taking dip in a bathing well in Isha Yoga Center, near here, on Friday morning.
Around 8.30 a.m., M. Ramesh, a third year civil engineering student had taken two dips and did not get up after the third in the ‘Surya Kund’ at the centre. His friends pulled him out unconscious and tried to bring him to consciousness, said A. Peter Jayaraj, a teacher, who had accompanied the students.
The students – 37 including seven women – of a private college in Vellore were on a study tour.
The students then informed the Isha volunteers who gave him first aid. The volunteers took Ramesh to a nearby emergency room, where they put him on a ventilator and brought him back to consciousness. As he remained unresponsive, they rushed him in their ambulance to a private hospital in the city, Mr. Jayaraj said.
There the doctors declared that he was dead on arrival. From there the volunteers took his body to the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital for a post mortem examination.
After dropping the body at the hospital, the volunteers fled the scene, Mr. Jayaraj alleged and charged the Isha Center management with not cautioning the visitors about the water temperature or the precautions to be taken before entering the Kund.
The students had started around 10 p.m. Thursday from their college in Vellore. The tour was unofficial as the management had not approved of the same. The students took the initiative to visit to Mettupalayam and Udhagamandalam to study curve alignment for highways and railways in the hills.
Their first destination was Isha Center in Vellingiri hills as the students wanted to visit the place. They bought the entry tickets to proceed to the bathing wells.
Isha sources said that the men bathed in the Surya Kund and the women in the Chandra Kund. The Surya Kund was about 4.5 ft deep and had three ‘Sivalingams’ that were half-immersed in the water. The procedure was to shower first in nearby wash rooms and then enter the Kund for three dips before proceeding to the Dhyanalinga for meditation.
The sources also said that the center had clearly mentioned at the entry that persons with epilepsy, open wounds, dysentery, heart ailments, and a few more medical conditions should not enter the Kund.
The police said that they had registered a case based on a complaint.
Ramesh’s father Mannarsami, was a farmer in Kasthampady in Tiruvannamalai district.
