6 drown in Yamuna in Haryana's Panipat; 3 bodies fished out

Mukesh Tandon
Tribune News Service
Panipat, September 15

Six people including two girls and a woman drowned in Yamuna River near Jalmana village of Bapoli block of Panipat district on Tuesday morning.

The dead bodies of three people have been fished out from the Yamuna river. Three among the six are the members of a family while two were close relatives of the family.

Sushil of Jalmana village along with his wife Sonia (32); 12-year-old son Sagar; 10-year-old daughter Payal; two close relatives Badal (15) of Chandoli village and Saurabh (16) of Karhans village and 19-year-old girl Sarita, daughter of a neighbour Shyam Singh, went for a bath in the Yamuna at Jalmalna ghat near Jalmana village of Panipat on Tuesday morning.

Sushil stood on the bank of the Yamuna while Sonia, Sagar, Payal, Badal, Saurabh and Sarita entered the water. They were bathing in the water when three of them went to a deep end and started drowning. To save them, three others also went into deep water and drowned.

As Sushil saw them drowning, he started crying for help. Meanwhile, some villagers who were on the other side of Yamuna heard his voice and jumped into the river to save them but till they reached there all were drowned. Besides, scores of villagers gathered there. They informed the administration about the incident.

Naib Tehsildar Naresh Kaushal; Pradeep Kumar, DSP Samalkha and Shree Bhagwan, SHO Bapoli along with teams reached spot and began a search for the people drowned.

The divers fished out the dead bodies of three persons including Sarita, Sonia and Badal after three hours. Besides, the teams of divers are searching for the other three drowned people- Sagar, Payal and Saurabh.

Naib Tehsildar Naresh Kaushal said that the family members along with their relatives entered into the Yamuna to take a bath and they drowned. Three dead bodies have been fished out while efforts are being made to search other three persons, the Naib Tehsildar asserted.

The police have sent the three bodies to the mortuary at the General Hospital for the post-mortem examination, he added.