Day before rowing final, 2 Kolkata boys went for practice round, didn’t return

What happened next was what no one ever imagined would happen.

“From around 3.30 pm, the skies started to turn grey. But it wasn’t bad. The squall and rain came suddenly, when they were in mid-water,” Arijit Nandy, two years their senior at South Point school and an eyewitness to the tragedy that unfolded, told The Indian Express.

“The wind speed was vicious, and there was a stiff current. There were other boats also and everybody started to come back. Unfortunately, their boat overturned. It had five people, including an experienced cox (the rower who steers the boat) who tried his best. He saved two rowers but couldn’t save Pushan and Souryadeep. Maybe, their hands were ripped clean off the boat,” said Nandy, who was competing in the senior boys section.

The two students were from the city’s Lake Club, where they had cut their teeth in rowing. According to Lake Club joint secretary Debu Datta, six-seven boats capsized and the rowers were brought back to the club. When they found two of them missing, a search operation started. Around 7.40 pm, the Kolkata Police’s disaster management team managed to pull the two out of the lake and take them to SSKM Hospital. They were declared “brought dead”.

Pushan was in Class IX, Souryadeep in Class X. Both were south Kolkata residents — from Santoshpur and Raja Basanta Roy Road, respectively — and “good swimmers” but couldn’t negotiate the 90kmph storm and the choppy lake.

“They were good students, too. Very enthusiastic about sports. We are trying to build our rowing team, and they were the most junior members, very active. We all are very upset,” South Point principal Rupa Sanyal Bhattacharjee told The Indian Express. The school issued a statement, condoling the death of its students. “We appeal to the authorities to consider reviewing the safety standards for rowers,” it said.

School trustee Krishna Damani told The Indian Express that usually, “follow speedboats” accompany the rowers and act during emergencies at most rowing venues. But Calcutta Rowing Club secretary Chandan Roy Chowdhury said intervention by activists had put an end to this practice at Rabindra Sarobar, which is shared by all rowing clubs in the city.

“We call the rescue speedboats ‘follow boats’ and they mandatorily accompany the rowers everywhere in India. What has happened here is that a few self-styled environmentalists were constantly writing to the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority to stop the use of speedboats to prevent water pollution and safeguard fish. We received an order from the Authority on May 18 that speedboats could no longer be used,” Chowdhury said.

“Rowing started here in 1928 and for the first time, such a tragic incident has happened. We are devastated.”

According to those who knew the two students, rowing was a passion for Pushan and Souryadeep. But in the end, that extra practice session proved to be fatal.