On Tuesday evening, as rain accompanied by strong winds lashed Kalashi, a village nearly 130 km from Pune, Chandrakant Lokdhande (38), a fisherman, rushed out of his house to check if his boat was alright. As he reached the bank, he could hear a voice — someone crying for help — and saw a man stuck in the slush of the backwaters of Ujjani dam. As he ran towards him, Lokdhande recognised the man — his friend Rahul Dongre, an assistant police inspector. Dongre was muttering, “Golya, golya… golya behind.” He was referring to Avghade, the boatman (golya).
As Lokdhande scanned the water, he could not see Avghade or his boat. On the boat were Dongre and his cousin. The boat was also ferrying a family of four: Krushna Jadhav and his wife Komal, their one-and-a-half-year-old son Shubham and three-year-old daughter Mahi. They had set out from nearby Kugaon village to attend a function in Kalashi when their boat capzised in rough weather on Tuesday evening. Dongre managed to swim to safety but got stuck in the slush, while the others are feared drowned.
While Lokdhande along with other villagers managed to rescue Dongre, the other six remain missing.
The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) halted its search efforts after sunset on Wednesday and will resume it on Thursday morning.
“Those feared drowned include three men, one woman and two children. This was a passenger boat regularly plying between Kugaon and Kalashi. On Tuesday evening, the boat was coming from Kugaon to Kalashi. There was rain and strong winds due to which the boat is believed to have capsized,” an official from Pune district administration said. “Of the seven persons on the boat, one of them, who is a police officer, managed to swim to safety. The silt is also posing a challenge in the search operations,” the official added.
Kugaon and Kalashi villages are 2.5-km apart and is a 10-minute journey by boat. Boats operate daily in the backwaters of the Ujjani dam, ferrying villagers from one village to another.
On Tuesday evening, Lokdhande tried to rescue Dongre but realised that he cannot do it alone. He then took out his phone and tried to call other villagers. With rain and strong winds, the phone network was patchy and he struggled to contact fellow villagers.
Luckily, another fisherman Bapurao Selampure (32) too had stepped out of his house to inspect the condition of his boat. He saw Lokdhande and ran towards him. Another villager Akshay Nagre too reached the spot by chance. All three managed to pull Dongre out of the slush.
“When we finally got Dongre out of the water, he was not looking good. His stomach had bulged out and he was breathless. We got the water out of his body, he vomited and was finally able to speak. It was a close shave. If we had not reached the spot on time, he wouldn’t have been able to make it,” Selampure said.
It was then that the four tried to contact officials for help. The NDRF said they got a call from district officials at 9 pm on Tuesday night. The NDRF teams reached the spot at 5.30 am on Wednesday. “We tried to reach at the earliest but at night it is not possible to carry out search operations. Also when we were on our way, poles and trees had fallen along the way, which made it difficult to reach the spot earlier,” said Surendra Poonia, inspector, NDRF.
NDRF teams found the boat at around 10 am and also a bike subsequently. The boat, apart from the victims, also had three bikes on it. “We were expecting to find the bodies today, but could not,” said Poonia.
“We have not been able to locate the bodies yet. The water is 50ft deep and that’s making the task difficult,” said Pankaj Deshmukh, SP, Pune.
“The boat could carry 40 passengers and 20 bikes on it. This is an everyday job for us,” Samadhan Waughmore, a villager from Kalashi, said.
He explained that Kalashi and Kugaon used to be the same settlement earlier, but got separated by the backwaters of Ujjani dam. If they have to make the journey by road, it is 80 km through Indapur.
With the authorities unable to locate the bodies on Wednesday, villagers got impatient and started rescue operations on their own. A villager confronted the police, “It’s been so long, what are you doing.” They also requested the authorities to press more personnel in the rescue operations.
Currently, a team of four deep divers and 20 NDRF personnel with the support of Pune Rural police are carrying out the search operations. Four boats and eight oxygen cylinders have been pressed for the rescue operations. Underwater cameras are also being used.
Chandrakant Lokhande (38) and Bapurao Selampure (32) are two of the three witnesses and helpers who immediately jumped into the river to rescue API Rahul Dongre while he was drowning in Ujani dam. (Express photograph by Arul Horizon) 
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