GUNTUR: Five persons — three children and two teenagers — drowned in two accidents in the district on Sunday.
A pall of gloom descended on the villages of Konuru of Atchampet mandal and Lingapalem of Macherla mandal where the incidents were reported.
In the Konuru incident, the victims were identified as Parupalli Ajay (19) of Deepaladinne, a B.Tech second year student, and Matcha Manindra (16) and K. Kautilya (12), both of the same family, from Konuru.
According to the police, the three, along with their friends Roopanjali, Nani, Rudradev, and Lakshmi Praveena, went to the dairy farm of Manindra’s father Koteswara Rao and played there for sometime.
Later, they went to the Krishna river nearby to take a bath.
Kautiyla ventured into the water unaware of the depth and slipped away. Ajay, who tried to rescue Kautiyla, too lost grip and shouted for help, prompting Manindra to reach out to him. But Manindra too drowned in the process of helping the other two.
Their bodies were fished out later.
In the incident at Lingapalem, two brothers — Donda Sivarama Krishna (6) and Donda Srisai (5), both studying in LKG, drowned in the Chandravanka Vagu while they were playing with friends.
“Children gathered at the stream near their school to play as it is a holiday. Both the victims ventured into the stream where there is an underwater pit,” the police said.
A case was registered under Section 174 of the CrPc.
Two go missing at sea
Special Correspondent in Visakhapatnam writes:
A holiday trip to the beach turned out to be tragic for two families that went to the Revupolavaram beach under S. Rayavaram Police Station limits in Visakhapatnam district on Sunday.
One person from each of the families went missing and were feared drowned when they ventured into the sea for a swim. Two others swam to safety.
In all, 10 persons from the Darlapudi area went to the beach. Four of them went for a swim. They were caught in a strong current that sucked two persons deep into the sea. The other two could swim back to the shore.
Sub-Inspector of S. Rayavaram S. Arun Kumar said that both the families were from Rajasthan and had settled at Darlapudi.
The missing persons were identified as Prem Singh (22) and Yakub Khan (21).
The police launched a search operation with the help of local fishermen.
