Mumbai: Rescuers have found the bodies of two of the four boys who went missing in the sea off Mumbai’s Juhu Koliwada on Monday. The search for two others still missing in the tragedy is curently underway, the BMC Disaster Control said on Tuesday. The boys were sucked into the Arabian Sea off Juhu Koliwada on Monday evening.
According to a civic official, the bodies of 16-year-old Dharmesh Valji Faujiya and 15-year-old Shubham Yogesh Bhogniya have been recovered. The two were part of a group of five friends, aged between 12 and 16 years, who ventured into the sea, about half a kilometre from the shore, around 5.30 pm on Monday but could not return.
Two others, Manish Yogesh Bhogania, 12, and Jay Roshan Tajbariya, 15, are still missing in the rough Arabian Sea waters, stirred by the cyclonic conditions of ‘Biparjoy’.
Of the total five victims who drowned Monday evening, one boy was rescued by the locals and fisherfolk, while the Mumbai Police, BMC fire brigade with speedboats, along with an Indian Navy chopper searched the sea till almost midnight for them.
The five were part of eight school friends who had gone on an impromptu half-day picnic to Juhu late on Monday afternoon, on the eve of the school reopening for the new academic year from Tuesday.
From the eight, five reportedly ignored warnings and went to a small fishing jetty from where they were swept off by the powerful waves in the water, and the power current quickly sucked them over half-km into the sea.
The eight minors, all non-swimmers, lived in a slum area of Vakola and had quietly slipped off for the evening sojourn that resulted in a watery grave for half the group, and the first major monsoon tragedy in Mumbai.
Authorities have already warned people and fishermen against venturing into the sea because of the rough conditions ahead of the landfall of cyclone ‘Biparjoy’ on the Gujarat coast on June 15.
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