2 teenage girls killed, 6 missing as boat capsizes off Maharashtra coast

The students from a junior college near Par Naka in Dahanu in Maharashtra’s Palghar district were on a picnic when their boat capsized in the Arabian Sea.

india Updated: Jan 13, 2018 17:17 IST
Rescue operations are on to find the missing students.
Rescue operations are on to find the missing students. (Santosh Patil/HT Photo)

Two teenage girls were killed and six others went missing when a boat carrying 40 students for a picnic capsized in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Dahanu in Maharashtra on Saturday, an official said.

Hundreds of parents crowded the Parnaka beach, wailing and crying as bodies of the two girls were fished out of the Arabian Sea after the tragedy struck the picnickers, IANS reported.

Thirty-two of the children were rescued in a massive search and rescue operation, which was launched after the students fell into waters around 5km off the beach.

All the students belonged to Babubhai Junior College near Par Naka in Dahanu, an area in Palghar district that is about 110 km from Mumbai.

“We have recovered two bodies and rescued 32 students. A search operation is on for the others,” Palghar superintendent of police Manjunath Singe told PTI.

The bodies of Sonal Bhagwan Surati and Janhavi Harish Surati — both 17 years old and residents of Masauli in Dahanu’s Ambedkar Nagar area — were recovered, Singe said.

IANS quoted eyewitnesses as saying that the tragedy was apparently triggered when some students reportedly crowded on one side of the boat to click selfies, resulting in the loss of balance as the vessel capsized.

A Dornier aircraft and Coast Guard vessels in the area were deployed for the rescue operation.

District collector Prashant Narnaware told PTI that the incident took place in the morning.

In another incident on Saturday, a Pawan Hans helicopter with seven people on board, including five ONGC employees, went missing after it took off from Juhu airport in Mumbai.

(With agency inputs)