In a tragic incident, two students drowned and two others went missing and were feared drowned while taking bath in the Brahmani river here on the outskirts of Rourkela on Saturday morning.
According to reports, five Plus II students, Kunal Prasad Sony (18) of Gopabandhupali, Anurag Das (18) of Basanti Colony, Soumya Ranjan Barik (20) of Koelnagar, Gyana Prakash Mohanty (19) of Sector-9 and Priyabrata Pati (18) of Sector-8 had gone to the Brahmani river at Tarkara pump house for a bath in the morning at about 7 am. While taking bath, two of them slipped into the deep waters.
While trying to rescue their friends, three other students also were swept away by the river current.local people, who were present near the dam, jumped into the water and managed to rescue Priyabrata immediately. Following information, fire brigade and ODRAF team rushed to the spot and with the help of local people they were able to fish out bodies of four students after a long effort. The condition of the rescued student, admitted to a hospital, is stated to be critical.
While Soumyaranja was studying in a private school at Bhubaneswar, other four students were studying in a private school in Rourkela. After recovering the bodies, police have sent them for postmortem.It may be mentioned here that while 13 persons, including these four, have died while taking bath in the river near the pump house this year, neither the local administration nor the RSP authority has taken any preventive measures so far.