Bengaluru : 5 City engg students drown in quarry pit

Mangalore Today News Network

Bengaluru: April 24, 2015: DHNS: Five students of a City-based engineering college met a watery grave at an abandoned quarry pit on Thursday afternoon in Bettadhalsuru on Kempegowda International Airport Road.

 

While four bodies were recovered from the nearly 80-foot-deep pit, the search for the fifth body was called off due to bad light.

Arun Chandra Shetty, Harish, Kham Patali, Rajesh and K R Nanda Kumar, all aged 20, were students of fourth semester BE (Electronics and Communication) at Sri Revana Siddeshwara Institute of Technology, Chikkajala.

While Patali and Rajesh were from Nepal, Arun, Harish and Nanda Kumar were from the City. Around 2 pm, the five youths, along with three other friends–Kartik, Nitin Jain and Hari Nandan–went for a swim at the pit located near their college.

“Kartik, Nitin Jain and Hari Nandan do not know swimming. So they decided to sit on the periphery of the pit. The rest ventured into the water,” the police said. Nanda Kumar and Patali were good swimmers, so they moved towards the deeper end. Harish, Rajesh and Shetty were playing in knee-deep water.

As Rajesh tried to venture a little further into the water, he slipped and fell and started to drown. On noticing this, Nanda Kumar and Patali tried to rescue him.

They held onto Rajesh’s hand but they, too, began to drown. On seeing this, Arun and Harish rushed towards them, but they all met the same fate, said their friends who watched helplessly as the horror unfolded.

Karthik, Jain and Nandan started shouting for help and one of them ran towards the village. By the time the locals rushed to the spot, all of them had drowned. The police and Fire and Emergency Service personnel rushed to the spot. They took more than two hours to recover four bodies, but failed to trace Harish. The search will continue on Friday morning.