Six members of a family from Ranchi were feared drowned when their boat capsized midstream in river Ganga near Akhara ghat in Mirzapur district on Wednesday afternoon.
Among the missing are four girls and two boys. The family is visiting the district for darshan at the famous Vindhyachal Temple.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath took immediate cognisance of the incident and directed the local officers to rush with teams of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and Flood Squad of the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) and rescue the victims at earliest. He also asked them to provide the best medical treatment.
According to the local police, 11 members of a family from Ranchi in Jharkhand have come to offer prayers at Vindhyachal temple and they crossed the Ganga for bathing. When they were returning, the boat capsized due to strong wind and heavy rains. Five members of the family and the boatman were rescued by the local villagers but half-a-dozen others went missing. They were reportedly swept away with the flow of the river.
Senior district officials rushed to the spot and efforts were on to trace the missing victims. Divers have been pressed to search and rescue them. The missing persons have been identified as Anisha, Khushbu, Gudiya, Shaurya , Satyam and Aradhya.
Meanwhile in another mishap in Shamli, the wife of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Anil Kumar Chauhan died on Tuesday after she jumped from the second floor of her house to escape a monkey attack.
The deceased, identified as 50-year-old Sushma Devi, had gone to the terrace of her house in Kairana town. However, Sushma found herself surrounded by a pack of monkeys. In order to avoid getting attacked by the monkeys, Sushma jumped off the terrace. She sustained serious injuries from the fall and was rushed to the hospital by the locals. She was pronounced dead by the doctors. Her husband Anil was reportedly not present at the home when the incident took place.
Anil, a local BJP leader, is the nephew of the late former party MP Hukum Singh who represented the Kairana Lok Sabha constituency from May 2014 till February 3, 2018 when he passed away.