Beach tragedy: My brother met a hero’s death, he tried to save others

As soon as the list was displayed on the campus, shrieks of parents rent the air. Relatives and friends accompanying them felt helpless as there was no way that the parents could be pacified.

AS the news of the tragedy spread, shocked parents, relatives and friends rushed to Azam Campus where a pall of gloom hung high. Initially, the college staff dithered in putting up the list of the dead students as they verified and reverified the identities of the students who drowned in the sea at the Murud Beach on Monday.

As soon as the list was displayed on the campus, shrieks of parents rent the air. Relatives and friends accompanying them felt helpless as there was no way that the parents could be pacified.

A youth, who was present at the campus, said he wanted to rush to Murud to check on his brother. “I know my brother is dead, but they are not telling me…I am being told that he is in the hospital,” said Parvez Shaikh, whose younger brother Iftekar Shaikh died in the tragedy. He had apparently not seen the list displayed on the noticeboard.

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On knowing that his brother is no more, he said, “My brother has met a heroic death.”

“I spoke to one of the girl students who survived the tragedy. She told me that Iftekar saved her life…And after that he again went into the water to save other students, but did not return…He has died, but died a hero,” said Parvez, refusing to speak further.

Rasool Shaikh, one of the friends of Iftekar Shaikh , said, “Though we were not from the same class, I knew Iftekar. I used to occasionally meet him in college. He was very stylish, good natured and a polite guy. Probably, because of that we got along,” he said.

Another friend, Mallick Shaikh said, “Iftekar Shaikh loved cricket, he was crazy about the gentleman’s game. Whenever I saw him with a group of boys in the college, I would invariably hear them talking loudly about cricket and heroics of the Indian cricketers,” he said.

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Families after families who stepped into the campus looked confused as they struggled to get information about their wards. The students who had left for picnic around 7 in the morning had apparently run out of battery, leading to their cellphones going off. Those family who spotted the names of their wards among the dead broke down, then and their. The college staff, local activists and their family friends tried to console them.

The Azam Campus on Monday saw a huge crowd gathered outside. Tempers ran as the families initially struggled to get information with the management too expressing its inability to provide the details. The management argued that teachers and students who were accompanying the bodies were in absolute shock and not in a position to speak. Adding to the confusion at the campus was the fact that the management was not approachable to the parents as they waited at the gate.

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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