Kadapa: As many as seven teenagers drowned to death in Penna river at Siddavatam town in Kadapa district on late Thursday evening, the police said. The group of friends came to attend the first death anniversary of their friend’s father.
Four bodies have been recovered until Friday morning. The police are on the search to retrieve three more. He said a search was on to recover bodies of three more persons. “We suspect the bodies might have been caught in the sand at the bottom of the river. All the victims are in their teens in the age group of 16-19 years,” Siddavatam Sub-Inspector said.
The youngsters – Somasekhar, Jaswanth, Jagadeesh, Sateesh, Rajesh, Chennu and Tarun – all students from Tirupati, came to Siddavatam to attend the rituals of the death anniversary of their friend Shiva Kumar’s father Ramachandraiah, who died of heart attack last year.
After the completion of the rituals, all friends went to Penna river on the outskirts of Siddavatam for a bath. “While Sivakumar returned to the shore after some time, the remaining seven went a little deep into the water, which was flowing at high speed. Apparently, they failed to judge the depth of the water and were washed away,” the police official said.
Shiva Kumar and others on the river bank alerted the police, who rushed to the spot immediate and took up search operations. They pressed expert swimmers into service and around 9 pm, they managed to recover the bodies of two youth, identified as Somasekhar and Rajesh.
“This morning, we could recover two more bodies. We are in the process of identifying the victims,” Ramesh Babu said, adding that the bodies of remaining three were expected to be retrieved by evening.
The bodies have been shifted to the local government hospital for post-mortem and the case is under investigation, the SI said.