Two more bodies found at Mandarmani beach

Two bodies were recovered from the Bay of Bengal at Mandarmani in East Midnapore on Sunday morning. A person was swept away in the sea, by the strong currents of water and two of his friends were also missing on Saturday.

The body of Sumontra Banerjee, resident of New Town was recovered on Saturday evening. The body of his two friends could not be found on Saturday. The police and the Coast Guard have recovered their body on Sunday. Police said the bodies of Lokesh Mehrotra, resident of Salt Lake and Vinay Chowdhury, resident of Teghoria were identified by their family members.

However, the police have started rampant search on the beach to locate anybody who were roaming on the beach in an inebriated state and going into the sea. The police personnel were seen taking smell from the mouths of beach revelers to find if they were drunk.

The state government decided to install close circuit camera in the beaches of Mandarmani, Digha and Tajpur to keep a close look out at the happenings there. In the first step, the installation will be made at Mandarmani, and then it would be continued at Digha and Tajpur as well.

Mandarmani hosts a huge number of tourists in almost every month in a year. But in spite of the repeated alert on the part of district administration, a tourist team from Kolkata had gone to the sea. They were inebriated and unruly and did not pay heed to the alert.

A few weeks ago, three Kolkata boys, two of them studying in the UK, were killed a few weeks in a head on collision between two cars.

It is also to be remembered that a youth was killed when he attempted a paragliding at the beach in 2015. Tarun Ghosh was on a holiday at Mandarmani, with his family when the unfortunate incident occurred. Ghosh, an adventure aficionado, in an attempt to make his journey memorable, enrolled his name for parasailing with a company named New Bengal Adventures. As soon as the parachute went into the air, the towing car came too close to an electric pillar due to the heavy tides. The parachute further went off track due to heavy rains and wind. The parachute got stuck in the pillar but the towing car didn’t stop. The pillar was pull up from the soil and was dragged for a distance along with Ghosh’s body.

The para-gliding incident uncovered the bizarre scenario of beach security in the state. The state government, without wasting any time had taken various security measures. Illegal games in the beach, including paragliding, were stopped. Cars have also been banned from entering into the beach by the authorities.