Hyderabad: A. Purna Shekhar and his friends wanted to carve name of their college on a flat stone they found on the corner of the river bank. If Shekhar had not moved to the shore from the top of a rock at the centre of the river, he would have also been swept away.
“We moved to the river bank to carve the name of our collge,” said Purna.
As they started walking to the shore, the water started rising and they felt it on their feet. “The water rose to our knees at the shallow part of the river. Our faculty member, Kiran, realised the danger and told us to alert others. We started yelling to our friends to move to a safer ground,” Shekhar said.
Initially, their alert went in vain as the students mistook it as a call to return to the bus and resume the journey.
“They did not realise that the water level was rising and wanted to click more photos,” said Shekhar.
Utter panic spread among them as most of the students did not know swimming and how to rescue the drowning victims. Few, who knew swimming, tried their best, pulled up some of the victim, Shekhar remembers.
“One among us soon called 100 and informed the emergency service. We were expecting a force would soon come and start rescuing the our friends. However, they took more than one and half hours to reach at the spot,” he said.
Shekhar, who is a native of Nirmal in Adilabad district, was living in a hostel near his college. A day after he reached Hyderabad from Himachal Pradesh, on Tuesday, he traveled back to his native place bearing horrific memories that he might never forget in his life.
