HYDERABAD: A weekend boat ride in Hussainsagar lake here ended in a tragedy for a 22-year-old woman software engineer on Saturday evening.
Bakta Pravalika, along with four of her friends, went on a cruise in a speed boat around 7.20 pm to see the Buddha statue which stands in the middle of the lake. While her boat was returning from the statue, another speed boat going in the opposite direction towards the statue rammed it, resulting in her throat being slashed by a sharp-edged portion of the other boat. She collapsed immediately but her friends survived the ordeal. Pravalika was rushed to a nearby corporate hospital where she was declared “brought dead”. Thereafter the body was shifted to the Gandhi Hospital mortuary.
Pravalika, a software engineer at Wipro, was a resident of Manikonda in the city. She hailed from Jharkhand. Police officials said that her parents were no more and her brother, who lives in Dubai, was informed of the incident. He is expected to reach Hyderabad on Monday.
Police wonder how the bigger boat failed to notice the speed boat. It is suspected that the place was dark after sunset. Hence poor visibility. It was the first such accident in the Hussainsagar, which have woken up the authorities to take notice of the fact that small and big boats need to be monitored constantly. Sources said an inquiry is likely to be ordered to ascertain the cause of the mishap. Pravalika moved from Jharkand to Hyderabad just four months ago for the job. Some of her friends from Bengaluru are on a visit to the city and she took them to the lake. Ramgopalpet police registered a case under Section 304 A (accident due to negligence).