Five students and a teacher of a Vedic school drowned in the Krishna river in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh on the evening of Friday, December 10. The tragedy occurred when they went for a bath in the river near Madipadu village of Acchampet mandal after completing their day classes. Their bodies were later retrieved from the river. It is suspected that the students were inadvertently caught in a whirlpool in the river and drowned.
The students have been identified as Shiva Sharma (14) of Madhya Pradesh, Nitish Kumar Dixit (15), Harshit Shukla (15), Shubham Trivedi (17) and Anshuman Shukla (14) of Uttar Pradesh. According to The New Indian Express, a sixth student also drowned in the tragic incident, and his body is yet to be found.
The teacher was K Subrahmanyam (24) of Narasaraopet in Guntur district. The students were undergoing Vedic education at the Sweta Sringachalam Vedic School at Madipadu in Atchampet mandal for around five years now. Students from various states of the country come here for Vedic education and it's a routine for them to regularly take a dip in the river.
Andhra Pradesh Governor Biswabhusan Harichandan and Education Minister Audimulapu Suresh expressed grief over the tragedy. The Governor extended his condolences to the bereaved families. The Education Minister spoke to officials of the department and obtained details about the incident. It was a very unfortunate tragedy, the minister said in a statement and conveyed sympathies to the bereaved families.
Earlier in November, six young boys in Telangana drowned in the Manair river near Sircilla. The boys, who did not know how to swim, drowned in the river after misestimating the depth of the water, police had said. Days before that, in another similar incident in Krishna district, three of 10 students of ITI (Industrial Training Institute) drowned when they went swimming in the Krishna river near Thotlavalluru.