17-year-old student bunks college, drowns in Thane’s Upvan lake

A 17-year-old college student drowned in Upvan Lake, Thane West, while swimming with friends after bunking college. His body was recovered three hours later.

Thane: A 17-year-old college student drowned in Upvan Lake, Thane West, where he had gone for a swim with friends after bunking college on Monday afternoon.

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His body was recovered three hours later and handed over to Vartak Nagar police for postmortem.

The incident took place around 1.45 pm when Aditya Pawar, a Class XII student at RJ Thakur College in Savarkar Nagar, along with his friends had gone for a swim in Upvan lake. He had left home at noon saying he was heading to college.

The friends decided to swim the distance from a food court at one end of the lake to Varanasi Ghat at the other. However, Pawar could not complete the distance and began drowning, said an official of the Regional Disaster Management Cell (RDMC).

Sagar Verma, who was at a cafe in the food court, saw Aditya drowning and informed the RDMC officials on the helpline.

He said, “There were five to six youngsters who were jumping into the lake from the food court, which is at some height, and swimming up to the ghat staircase which is around 200-300 meters away.”

Verma added, “While other boys managed to swim across, Aditya went half-way and began to drown. A boy, unrelated to the group, spotted this and jumped in to save him, but he failed.”

Verma said though a team of fire brigade officials arrived at the spot within 10 minutes of his call to the helplines, there was no scuba diver with them which led to a delay in finding the body.

“If scuba divers were available immediately, the boy probably could have been saved or at least, his body pulled out earlier,” said Verma.

An officer from the RDMC said, “We were informed about the incident around 2 pm and we immediately dispatched a pick-up van, four swimmers, one rescue van, and an expert from the Thane fire brigade team to the spot.

“A search was carried out with the help of three boats and around 5 pm, Aditya’s body was found. We have handed over the body to the police for postmortem.”

Aditya, a resident of Lokmanya Nagar, left home at noon saying he was headed to college but went to Upvan Lake.

Jitu Bhagat, a neighbour of Pawar’s family, said, “He bunked classes at his college and went to Upvan to have fun. His family members were informed about his drowning by the officials over a phone call. They almost collapsed as his mother said Aditya didn’t know how to swim.

“We all helped the family and rushed towards the lake with the hope that maybe someone would have saved him. Unfortunately, we lost our beloved Aditya,” said Bhagat.