SANGAREDDY: Six students drowned while immersing a Ganesh idol in a pond at Peddakanjarla village in Sangareddy district on Wednesday evening.
According to police, the students had taken a three-and-a-half-foot idol installed at the Shirisha Charitable Trust, an orphanage school-cum-college in Peddakanjarla, to the nearby Neredu pond for immersion.
A deep pit had recently been excavated at the site to remove soil for road construction. As it was dark, the students apparently mistook the water to be shallow and stepped in, resulting in all six drowning. Two others accompanying them managed to escape.
The victims were identified as Narsimha Raju (20), a third-year B.Tech student; Sumanth and Ganesh, both second-year diploma students; Uday Kiran, a third-year diploma student; Shamu Kumar, a first-year diploma student; and Siddharth, a Class 10 student.
Police said the immersion site had no lighting and no adults or representatives of the charitable trust were present.
The bodies were shifted to Patancheru Government Hospital. Police registered a case and launched an investigation.