Teen drowns riding a coracle in IIT-Madras lake, friend missing

CHENNAI: A teenager drowned and his friend was reported missing after the coracle in which they were taking a joyride on the IIT Madras campus lake capsized on Thursday afternoon. Four others managed to swim to safety and call the police. Fire and rescue services personnel recovered the body of Gerald, a 19-year-old ITI student, and plan to resume the search for Murthy Pandiarajan, 17, on Friday morning.

The six residents of Kanagam, which neighbours IIT-M, scaled the compound wall and went to the lake where they found the coracle, apparently left behind by some students, and decided to take a ride, a police officer said.

The four who escaped told investigators they were standing in the swaying coracle when it capsized and they fell in where the water is believed to be around 20 ft deep.

A sobbing Pandirajan, whose son Murthy is still missing, said he hoped the boy would surface somehow and call out his name. “He can’t swim properly and went to the lake despite warnings. He told his mother he was going out with friends. We were not aware he was going to the lake,” said the employee of a bread factory. Murthy would have been the first person in his family to pursue a degree. “He had appeared for the Class XII exam. He was a good football player and won medals.”

Residents urge authority to raise the height of wall

The Kotturpuram Police registered a case under CrPC section 174 (unantural death). Some guards at IIT-M told the police that teenagers scaling the institute wall from Kanagam and heading to the lake was route and that they had informed the institute management about this.

A few residents of the neighbourhood from where the boys came said they headed out together but said Gerald was usually not one to be part of such activities. “We saw the boys playing near our homes in the evening but didn't know they were going to the lake,” said Simon, a resident.

Others said that before the IIT-M management raised a new wall, many people from the area regularly scaled the wall and went to the lake when the water level was low.

Members of a temple trust in the neighbourhood have now written to the IIT-M authorities, urging them to raise the height of the wall and fortify it with starnds of barbed wire on top.

“There is a particular portion which is very low. The boys scaled the wall there to get on to the campus. We have written a letter totheinstitute andsubmitted it to the security office in light of this incident,” said E Paneerselvam, a member of the Thiruveediyamman Koil Trust.