CALANGUTE: In separate accidents, two
tourists died while clicking photographs in Baga and Sinquerim.
Police identified the victims as Dinesh Kumar Ranganatha, 28, and Sashikumar Vasan, 33, both from Tamil Nadu. The deaths happened five days after five youths from Akola, Maharshtra, met a watery grave off
Calangute.
Calangute PI Jivba Dalvi said a group of eight tourists from Mangaluru and Tamil Nadu had come to Baga beach on Saturday evening. Three of them crossed the
Baga creek and reached the rocky area. As one of them was taking photograph along with the others, a strong wave pulled them inside. While two of them managed to come out, the third one — Ranganathan from
Vellore — was swept away by the wave.
‘They were clicking pics when wave hit’
In the second incident, four tourists from Tamil Nadu went to Sinquerim, Candolim, for sunrise around 7 am. They went to a rocky area below Fort Aguada to take photographs. One of them started clicking photographs of his three friends seated on the rocks. Suddenly, a huge wave came and washed one of them away, said Dalvi.
Bodies of both the tourists were fished out later and send to the GMC for postmortem.
Two days ago, tourism minister Manohar Azgaonkar held a meeting with officials wherein he called for steps to be taken to create awareness among beach tourists. The tourism department is also exploring the option of introducing 24 x7 beach patrolling.
Drishti Marine, the lifeguard agency, had earlier said that with the onset of the monsoon all beaches in the state have been shut for swimming and water sports activities since June 8, 2018, with red flags put up on the beaches. The restrictions will continue till September.
Representative image