People in the border villages of Andhra Pradesh’s Visakhapatnam and Odisha woke up to grim news on Tuesday morning. A boat carrying at least eleven migrant workers capsized in Sileru river along the Andhra-Odisha border. The incident happened in the early hours of Tuesday in the Chitrakonda Police Station limits.
According to the police, a group of labourers from Hyderabad had reached the Andhra Pradesh border and they took a boat hoping to reach the other side of the river to Odisha. The eleven labourers took a boat and embarked on the journey. A little into the journey, the boat capsized. However, while they were struggling to stay afloat, three of them managed to swim to safety. Early in the morning, rescue operations began and the body of a child was first recovered by the rescue teams.
Speaking to TNM, B Krishna Rao, Visakhapatnam Rural SP said, “Three bodies have been found so far and the search operations are continuing for the remaining five. The migrant labourers wanted to evade the quarantine rules in Odisha and hence decided to take a route via the river. The incident happened early Tuesday morning. The Odisha officials are mainly involved in the rescue operations but the Andhra officials are extending all the required help from our side.”
The migrant workers were headed to Malkangiri, the place they hailed from. They decided to leave Hyderabad after Telangana declared a strict lockdown. Rescue teams from both Odisha and Andhra Pradesh were pressed into action to carry out rescue operations. Telangana has been under lockdown since May 14. The lockdown, which was supposed to end on May 22, was extended to May 30.