Man, two sons drown while fishing in lake near Cheyyar

TIRUVANNAMALAI: Tragedy struck Nayanathangal village in Vembakkam taluk near Cheyyar in Tiruvannamalai district when a man and his two young sons drowned in a lake during Mattu Pongal celebrations on Friday.Police said Thangaraj, 36, an office assistant at a private company in Chennai, had returned to his village with wife T Divyabharathi and sons T Rajesh, 7 and T Lathish, 5, for Pongal festivities. On Friday, to mark Mattu Pongal, Thangaraj took his sons to the lake in the village for fishing. When they failed to return home after several hours, his wife alerted relatives, friends and neighbours, who searched for him and the children in the village.People, on finding the footwear of the three on the bank of the lake, searched the water body only to find the bodies of the man and his two sons. A team from Moranam police station recovered the bodies in the presence of Vembakkam tahsildar Tamilmani and sent them for postmortem examinations to Cheyyar govt hospital.Initial inquiries revealed that Thangaraj slipped into mud while fishing, got trapped, and his sons attempted to save him. All three drowned. Witnesses said they saw the children playing near the water earlier. The incident serves as a grim reminder of water safety during festivals, with locals calling for warning signs at the lake.