Eight 16-year-old students of a private coaching institute drowned in the Arabian Sea while on a picnic at the Diveagar beach in Maharashtra’s Raigad district on Thursday, with the bodies of all the victims recovered, police said.
Condoling with the families who lost their children, he said the local administration was coordinating the transportation of the bodies. Eight students ventured into the sea and were swept away after misjudging the depth of the water and current, he added. Police identified the deceased as Yash Kiran Wankhede, Soham Tukaram Bhandwalkar, Tanmay Dattatray Vahile, Kaustubh Sandeep Daund, Kaivalya Satish Wasankar, Rajveer Yuvraj Vahile, Pranav Ramdas Bansod and Sumit Bharat Ahire. “Schoolchildren have no idea about the sea. It’s not a pond, it’s the sea….They cannot gauge the high tide or the depth of the water. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in a post on X termed the deaths as extremely tragic and painful.
A police officer said a group of 48 students — 25 boys, 17 girls and six teachers — had gone for a picnic at the beach for an educational excursion under Dighi coastal police station limits. All of them were 16 years old.
Search and rescue teams rushed to the spot following an alert and recovered the bodies, he said. Terming the incident as “heart-breaking”, Shiv Sena MLA Mahendra Dalvi, who represents the Alibag assembly constituency in Raigad district, blamed the local administration for the “lack of adequate safety precautions”. Moreover, these children might not even know how to swim,” Dalvi said, urging the local MLA and MP to look into the issue. Prashant Kurhade, chairman of the Alandi Municipal Council, told PTI that some of the students were from Alandi town itself, while others were from neighbouring Kelgaon.”We have been contacting the families,” he said, adding that some of the parents had already left for Diveagar.
