Weekend trip turns fatal, 2 drown in Mandarmani sea

A weekend trip to Mandarmani beach ended in tragedy for two youth who drowned after being swept away by strong waves on Sunday morning. Police later found their bodies and sent them for post-mortem.

Shivam Aggarwal (19), a resident of Howrah's Ramlal Mukherjee Road and his friend Mahesh Bhaiya (19) from Howrah's Mahadeb Ghosh Road went to have a bath in the sea, but accidentally drowned after being swept away by a wave, police said. Some of their other friends, who went to bathe along with Shivam and Mahesh, alerted the local divers to save their lives but despite sincere efforts, the youth could not be saved.

The police was informed later and the divers managed to bring back the inert bodies of Shivam and Mahesh. They were taken to Kanthi Hospital but the doctors declared them brought dead.

The police also broke the news of their death to their families. The investigators have also initiated a case.

"We will investigate whether these victims were in an inebriated state or not. We will collect information from the eyewitnesses and some of Shivam and Mahesh's friends, who were at the spot during the incident," said a police officer.

It may be mentioned that the state government has already installed Close Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras in the beaches of Mandarmani, Digha and Tajpur to keep a close watch at the happenings there. Such incidents of drowning, accidents in beaches will be under close watch. It will also be recalled that three boys from Kolkata, two of them who were studying in UK, were killed last year in an accident on the beach. It was a head-on collision between two cars which claimed the lives of the three boys. The revelers often treat the beach like a racing track and drive at very high speed. Shivraj Naskar, Suraj Dasgupta and Vaibhav Shandilya, all of them 21 and former students of a reputed school, had apparently driven all night to reach Mandarmani before the incident happened.

Soon after the accident, the administration decided to stop entry of cars on the beach.

But the threat of using the beach for car races loomed large since there was no way that a strict vigil could be maintained along the entire stretch.