Students' death: Kin slam varsity

VISAKHAPATNAM: Bodies of five Gitam University students, who drowned in the sea here, were recovered by the rescue teams on Thursday even as the kith and kin slammed the university for its indifferent attitude in providing help to them.
Search operations were still on to trace another missing student, who was feared drowned along with the five others when they entered the waters at the Rushikonda beach on Wednesday.One student, Rahul Babu, was rescued by the local fishermen on Wednesday itself.
Helicopters of Navy, Coast Guard along with marine police and private boats were pressed into the search operations in the morning. The body of Bhupati Sushil Babu (Warangal) was found at 6am close to the spot where the students had drowned. The choppers later found the bodies of girl students - Gujjala Preeti Reddy (Warangal), P Sindhuja (Hyderabad) and Ramineni Anusha (Kodad) - behind some rocks near a private resort at around 1.30pm.
The marine police and the Navy choppers called off the search operations around 5.30pm as it was becoming dark. Around 7.30pm, the body of Anurag Reddy (Karimnagar) washed ashore. For the parents and relatives of P Sai Nitin (Hyderabad) it was an agonizing waiting with tears in their eyes
as his body could not be traced.
The parents and relatives of the deceased, who reached the beach in the morning, were inconsolable. Grief-stricken parents cried out loud.
A few of them slammed the irresponsible attitude of the officials of Gitam University for not providing any information. "We will approach the human rights commission. How could they permit the students to go out when the classes were being held?" Praveen, a relative of Anusha, asked.
Legal advisor of the university A Raju said the incident was unfortunate and said the university would hand over Rs 1 lakh each to the members of the deceased families. City police commissioner J Poornachandra Rao said they would conduct awareness programmes near the beaches and erect warning boards.