Four boys drowned and two others went missing while bathing in the Cauvery at Ramanujapuram village near Kabisathalam in Thanjavur district on Friday.
Fire and Rescue Services personnel, along with local residents, retrieved the bodies after a long search.
Police sources said a group of seven boys from Seethalakshmipuram area near Kabisthalam had gone to the river to take bath in the afternoon when tragedy struck. The incident came to light after one of the boys, Sanjay, who managed to swim to safety, alerted local residents about the drowning of his friends at around 2 p.m.
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Teams of fire-fighters from the Papanasam fire station, the police and local rsidents launched a search operation which lasted six hours.
By evening, four bodies had been retrieved.
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“There was a strong current. It was a difficult task for the fire-fighters to search a distance of nearly 1.5 km for nearly six hours,” said M. Elanchezhiyan, Additional District Fire Officer and Fire Officer In-charge of Thanjavur.
“There was a strong current. It was a difficult task for the fire-fighters to search a distance of nearly 1.5 km for nearly six hours,” said M. Elanchezhiyan, Additional District Fire Officer and Fire Officer In-charge, Thanjavur.
Some of the Cauvery’s water was diverted into the Arasalar to reduce the flow and aid the search operation, said Mr. Elanchezhiyan.
The bodies of Manikandan (17), Venkatesan (18), Naveen (14) and Vishnu (13) were retrieved.
The search operation continued till late in the evening to locate the other two boys – Sivabalan (15) and Kadiravan (17) – who are feared to have drowned.
Search to resume
The search was called off by late evening and will resume on Saturday.
The bodies of the four boys were sent to the Papanasam Government Hospital for a post-mortem.
The Kabisthalam police are investigating.