Three college students drown in Mulshi dam

PUNE: An outing to the Mulshi dam by four college students from Dehu road turned into a tragedy on Friday when three of them drowned. The Paud police fished out the bodies of Francis Sampathkumar (19) and Mayuresh Mathu (19), both of Vikasnagar, but Gurmansingh Kohli (19) remained untraced till late Friday evening despite a massive search operation by the police.
Although none of the four knew swimming, Tejan Samuels managed to come out of the waters safely. Sampathkumar and Mathu were students of a private engineering college in Talegaon Dabhade and Kohli was a commerce student in a Pimpri college. Police inspector N S Nyahalde of the Paud police station said, “Around 2.30 pm, all of them entered the Mulshi dam waters at Gonwadi village on the Pune-Kolad road. They were taking photographs while playing in the dam waters.
They ventured deep into the waters but subsequently found they could not get back to safety. Samuels somehow came out of the waters and raised an alarm.” Local residents and some passers-by went to the dam and started searching for Sampathkumar, Mathu and Kohli. Meanwhile the police were informed. “We summoned two boats, including one from the Pune zilla parishad and another from the power company, and started searching for the students,” Nyahalde said. After fishing out the bodies of Sampathkumar and Mathu, the police had to stop their search operation as it had turned dark. “We will resume our search for Kohli on Saturday morning,” Nyahalde said.