A 21-year-old engineering student drowned in Jadhavwadi dam near Talegaon in Pune on Tuesday evening while two of his friends were rescued by National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel. The incident took place after a group of friends from a local college went on an outing to the dam’s backwaters. The police identified the deceased as Aditya Sharad Rahane (21), a student of Nutan Engineering College, located at Vishnupur in Maval. Officials from Talegaon MIDC police station said that a group of four-five friends had come to the Jadhavwadi dam backwater around 6 pm. “Around 6.30 pm, Rahane entered the waters. As he could not gauge the depth of water, he started drowning. Two of his friends jumped into the water and they also started drowning. An NDRF pump house is located in the same area. Some NDRF personnel at the pump house rushed to the spot,” Inspector Ranjit Sawant, in-charge of Talegaon MIDC police station, said. Officials said that the NDRF personnel succeeded in rescuing two students. Rahane was taken out a while later and rushed to a hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Police have identified the two other friends as Bhimashankar Mathpati and Aditya Nile, both 21. “There are many dams in the Maval and Mulshi regions and there are a large number of areas in remote villages that give easy access to their backwaters. All concerned departments have displayed warning boards in the area yet a large number of people enter these waters and such unfortunate incidents take place,” said an officer from Pune Rural police.
