On a picnic,6 students drown in Gomti

The deceased have been identified as Vishwa Deepak Singh,Rahul Singh,Ravi Shankar Yadav,Anshul Chaurasia,Vishnu Pratap Singh and Ashish Kumar Singh. Only two members of the group — Abhishek Pratap Singh and Vivek Singh — survived because they were taking pictures of their friends from a hill top. When they saw their friends drowning,they informed the locals and the police.

“Abhishek and Vivek gave us details of the accident. We have not cross-checked yet,” said the Sitapur Superintendent of Police Pratinder Singh. The deceased were aged between 18 and 20 and lived in Neelmatha locality in Cantonment area.

It was a personal trip and the school was not involved,confirmed U P Singh,a relative of one of the victims,Rahul Singh.

“The place were the accident took place is isolated and there was no one to answer their cries for help,” said Singh. Anshul Chaurasia’s nextdoor neighbour Mithlesh Kumar said,“After his board exams got over yesterday,Anshul told his father he wanted to attend the marriage of his friend’s brother in Sitapur. Initially,his father Uday Bhan Singh Chaurasia was not willing to let him go,but when other boys came in to pick him at 4 am,he agreed,” said Mithlesh Kumar.

Anshul’s father,a retired Army officer,now works with the Army workshop. Around 4 pm on Sunday,the Sitapur police informed him about the accident. “Anshul’s father left for Sitapur immediately and asked me to go to his home and inform his wife about the accident,” said Mithlesh.

According to the police,the boys went to Abhishek Pratap’s house in Bargawa locality of Sitapur on Sunday morning. They had taken a bus from Lucknow. “They hired a car and went to Abhishek’s house and left for Hardoi with him. From there they returned to Sitapur and went to Khulaba Ghat to take a bath. While they taking a dip,one of them slipped into the deep side of the water,” said a police official.

The bodies have been sent for postmortem.