CHENNAI: Three people, including a 17-year-old boy, drowned in the pond of the Vaithya Veeraraghava Perumal Temple in Tiruvallur on Tuesday morning while performing a ritual as part of a religious ceremony, .
The deceased were identified as Veeraraghavan (24) from Tenkasi, Venkataraman (19) from Ambattur, and Hariharan (17) from Kundrathur. All three were students at a religious mutt in Selaiyur and were part of a five-member group that had come to the temple for a ceremonial observance.
According to police sources, the incident occurred around 6 a.m. while the group was at the temple pond. It is suspected that one of the students may have accidentally slipped into the water, and the other two jumped in to rescue him but drowned in the process.
A student nearby noticed the incident and raised an alarm, drawing the attention of other devotees and temple staff. Two of the victims were pulled out unresponsive and declared dead at the scene, while the third died en route to the hospital.
The Tiruvallur Town Police recovered the bodies and sent them to a government hospital for postmortem examination. A case has been registered, and further investigation is underway to ascertain the exact sequence of events.