CHENNAI: Drowning deaths continued unabated along the beaches of Chennai despite patrolling by the city police, with three more bodies, including that of a Class XI student, washed ashore in a day. With this, the number of deaths so far in this year has touched 19.
Vignesh (17), a resident of Kellys, who was studying in Class XI at a school in Chetpet, drowned while taking a dip at Marina on Sunday evening. His body was washed ashore behind the Gandhi Statue on Monday. The second victim was Naveen (19), an engineering student from Tirupur, who came to the city with his friends on Sunday. His body was washed ashore near Neelankarai. In the last incident, the body of an elderly woman, whose identity is yet to be established, was washed ashore near Elliots Beach on Monday.
As per statistics, Chennai reported a total of 62 cases in 2014 - the figure includes those drowned in wells and other water bodies. Of this, the four major beaches including Marina, accounted for as many as 30 deaths.
Among the four, the number of deaths were high at Marina with 19 drownings, while Elliots beach and Tiruvanmiyur beach recorded four each, and Neelankarai beach accounted for three cases of drownings. A majority of the deaths involve youngsters.
The Mounted Wing of the City Police has been patrolling the Marina beach, which has a shoreline of 13 km, to deter beach goers from entering the waters. Even the weekly announcements and warning signs put up citing the number of persons drowned have not helped prevent youngsters from entering into the waters of Bay of Bengal which has strong undercurrents.
The fisher-folk from the hamlets believe that the nearly five-decade-old wreckage of Stematis, a Liberian cargo vessel that ran aground behind the Labour Statue after a cyclone, continues to remain underwater. Most of those who drowned are believed to have gotten entangled in the wreckage, leading to death.
