BHOPAL: Three Class XII students of two different schools reportedly drowned while bathing in the Hathinala-Bildha waterfalls in Madhya Pradesh’s Narsinghpur district on Friday.
The three teenagers aged between 17 and 18 years, identified as Tanmay Sharma (son of a revenue department Patwari), Ashwin Jat, and Akshat Soni were close friends and students of two different schools.
On Friday, the Tourism Department organized a quiz contest in schools. As a result, a holiday was declared for all students except the participants. The holiday had already been notified in advance on Thursday.
The three teenagers who lived in separate localities of Narsinghpur town left their homes, telling their parents that they are going to school.
"When the trio didn’t return home till evening, their families reported about it to the police at around 6 pm, after which search operations started. The three boys had left home on two two-wheelers, including a scooter and a motorcycle. As the GPS system was installed in the scooter, it was tracked near the Hathinala-Bildha waterfall, which is located in jungles, around 40 km from Narsinghpur district HQ," local police station in-charge BL Tyagi said.
A team of home guards, local police, and divers was pressed into action, after the school uniform and school bag of one boy and clothes of the two other boys were found close to the waterfall.
Subsequently, three bodies were retrieved from the deep waterfall between 11 pm and 1 am. A local diver, Babulal, played a key role in extricating the three bodies with the help of a plastic rope fitted with an iron hook.