Bhubaneswar: Bodies of two more students, who went missing in the Kuakhai near Dhabalahar village of Bainchua panchayat under Balianta block on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar, were retrieved on Wednesday morning, taking the toll in the river tragedy to four.
Bodies of two other students were fished out from the river the previous day.
The deceased have been identified as Aryan Mishra of Jamshedpur, Kumar Avinash of Cuttack, Rohit Parida of Balasore and Prateek Dhalasamanta of Balikuda.
According to sources, 8 friends from a private management college in the city went to the river to take a bath and four among are suspected to have slipped into deep waters before being swept away by the strong current.
Fire Service personnel and some scuba drivers carried out a search operation at the mishap site, which was stopped last night. The operation was resumed this morning when two more bodies were recovered. “They had come here around 2 pm to take a bath. We received information about the mishap at around 5 pm. The police team and firefighters’ team managed to retrieve the bodies of the missing students with the help of locals,” Balianta police station IIC Jubaraj Swain.
This is the second incident of drowning in the river in less than a month. On May 27, two engineering students from Bhubaneswar and Angul had drowned here.
