With the recovery of the body of one more student, the toll in the Murud beach tragedy rose to 14 on Tuesday, even as the Bombay High Court took cognisance of the incident and sought to know from the Maharashtra Government what steps it had taken to make beaches secure against mishaps like the one witnessed on Tuesday.
On a day the Navy and the Coast Guard traced the body of Madaki Saif Ahmed after a prolonged search, hundreds of relatives and friends bade an emotional adieu to 13 drowned students – whose bodies had been recovered on Monday – at various burial grounds and crematoria in Pune.
As many as 13 students, all studying computer science at the Abeda Inamdar College in Pune, drowned in the Arabian Sea off Murud beach in Raigad district in Maharashtra’s coastal Konkan region on Monday, while they were on a picnic there.
While the bodies of 13 students were found, the Navy and Coast Guard had launched a search operation for one more missing student. Those drowned comprised 10 girls and three boys. The drowned students were among a group of 130 students that had gone to the popular tourist destination of Murud-Jangira for a picnic.
Confirming the recovery of Madaki Ahmed’s body, PA Inamdar, president of Maharashtra Cosmopolitan Education Society said: “The body of Madaki Saif Ahmed has been found. His parents have rushed to the spot and after postmortem, the body will be brought back to Pune”.
Dwelling upon the events leading to the drowning of 14 students from his college, Inamdar said: “Going by the preliminary information we have received from the spot, three to four students started drowning first. Seeing the fellow students drown, ten students formed a human chain and they too ventured into the sea and drowned along with their campus mates”.
Inamdar said an enquiry will be conducted to ascertain any negligence on the part of the ten faculty members who had accompanied the students on their picnic to Murud beach.