Puri: Two youths drowned while taking a bath in Narendra Pokhari, the holy tank near Shree Jagannath Temple, in Odisha’s Puri town on Tuesday.
The two deceased persons have been identified as Raj Kishore Satpathy (23) of Kukudakhandi in Ganjam district and Nalinikanta Tripathy (27) of Ichhapuram area in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.
According to sources, the incident took place when the cousins were taking bath in the pond as part of the tenth-day death ritual of a relative. Seeing them drowning, locals alerted fire services department which rushed officials to the spot for a rescue operation. Though they were pulled out of the pond and rushed to district headquarters hospital, doctors there declared them dead.