Amaravati, March 20 – Five engineering students drowned in the Godavari River in the Polavaram district of Andhra Pradesh on Friday, police said.
The bodies of three students have been recovered, and the search continues for the other two. The incident occurred near Purshottapatnam in the Etapaka mandal.
According to police, a group of seven students from SRM Engineering College in Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh, entered the river to take a bath.
The students, apparently unaware of the depth of the water, suddenly started drowning. Five of them were swept away, while two managed to reach the riverbank.
Local residents, with the help of a boat, started searching for the missing students. Police and other authorities also launched a search operation. The bodies of three students were recovered. They have been identified as C. Srikar, P. Abhiram, and Navdeep.
Srikar is from Bhadrachalam in Telangana, Abhiram is from Vizianagaram, and Navdeep is from Vuyyuru in the Krishna district.
The search is ongoing for Goka Teja and Pasham Satish Kumar, who are from Vuyyuru and Madanpalli, respectively.
The students were pursuing their second-year B.Tech at SRM College in Amaravati. They were on a pleasure trip to the region during the Ugadi holidays. After visiting Bhadrachalam in Telangana, they came to Purushottapatnam.
Two of them, Chanduri Deepak and Gaddam Harshvardhan, both from Andhra Pradesh, managed to reach the riverbank safely.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu expressed his grief over the tragedy. He conveyed his heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims.
According to an official release, he spoke to officials about the incident and gathered the details. Officials explained that seven students entered the Godavari River to take a bath, and five of them subsequently went missing.
They informed the Chief Minister that three of the missing students had died, while the search operations were continuing to locate the remaining two students, Satish Kumar and Teja.
The Chief Minister directed the officials to intensify the search operations for the two missing students.
Chief Minister Chandrababu conveyed his condolences to the families of the deceased. He assured the affected families that the government would stand by them during this difficult time.