Novice swimmer drowns in Hedua swimming pool

In an unfortunate incident a novice swimmer died at Azad Hind Bagh popularly known as Hedua pool on Tuesday morning.

Six women trainers surrendered before the police. The secretary and assistant secretary of Azad Hind Bagh Mahila Samity are absconding. The Burtola police has registered a case and started investigation.

The deceased, Sangeeta Das, a resident of Girish Park area was a second year MSc student of Home Science at Biharilal College. On Tuesday morning she along with her aunt came to the club to take lessons in swimming. She had joined the club about a fortnight ago. After she did not return home, her aunt came to the club and inquired about her. Her bag and identity card was found in the locker room.

The trainers went and saw her body floating in one corner of the swimming pool. The police was informed. The police took out the body and sent it for post-mortem. The club has been shut down for three days from June 1.

Local people complained of poor infrastructure and said that no professional trainers were engaged to look after the novices. They wondered how the trainers could fail to identify her body which was found floating in one corner of the pool. The police said the number of life belts were very few. 

They said a swimmer died five years ago during practice. They said the depth of water on pools where novices were trained should be anything between 4 feet to 4.5 feet but the depth of water in the corner from where her body was recovered was 8 feet.

The police said a thorough investigation would be conducted. The swimming session starts from April and continues till September 30. There are two sessions in the morning and two in the afternoon.  Highly trained professional trainers are supposed to look after the novices, many of whom are afraid of water. 

Then they have to teach how to float the body and before giving admission, it is mandatory that the newcomers are asked to submit their medical reports and generally those suffering from heart ailment and epilepsy are not given admission.

The police is investigating whether the club authorities had taken the medical report and why she was not accompanied by a trainer as she started taking lessons only a fortnight ago.