JU student drowns in Hooghly river, search on to locate body

A second year computer science student of Jadavpur University is feared drowned in river Hooghly when he fell into the river while taking ride on a boat with five other friends.

The victim and his friends had boarded the boat from Princep Ghat and the incident took place at 3.30 pm on Thursday.

Police said that the 19-year-old boy Raunak Saha was a resident of Salt Lake. On Thursday afternoon he went to Princep Ghat with five of his friends, including two of his classmates and two girls 

from a private engineering college.

His friends told the police that the boatman took the boat almost to the middle of the river and anchored it with a steamer.

The boatman, Sheikh Saifuddin, went to the steamer leaving all five of them to gossip among themselves.

After around an hour, Raunak called the boatman repeatedly but he received no reply and tried to jump to the steamer from the boat. In an attempt to do so he fell into the river.

Neither Raunak nor his four friends knew swimming. As a result his friends kept shouting for the 

boatman, but he allegedly didn’t respond to their calls. It was too late when the boatman came.

They immediately contacted the police over the phone and sought their help. 

A team comprising officers from the city police’s disaster management group initiated the search operation. But they failed to find him out till the last report came in.

One the other hand, the boatman told the police that he had seen one of the friends pushing Raunak into the water.

The police, however, did not feel that the boatman was telling the truth and he was trying to blame 

Raunak’s friends to hide his own fault.

Moreover, there was no life jacket in the boat and the boatman was not supposed to leave the vessel when some people were taking the ride.

Alcohol was found in the blood sample of the four friends of Raunak during medical test after the incident and police suspect that they were having alcohol while taking a ride on the boat.