No warning sign at British lake, says NRI dad

A grieving Indian Sikh has demanded to know why there was no warning sign at Ullwater Lake, Birmingham, where his teenaged son and two other Sikh youths were drowned.

A grieving Indian Sikh has demanded to know why there was no warning sign for bathers at Ullwater Lake, Birmingham, where his teenaged son and two other Sikh youths were drowned.

HT Image

Jarnail Singh Bisran said locals knew that the lake was treacherous, but there was no warning for visitors.

The three youths - Harvinder Singh Bisran, 15, Sattvir Singh, 17, and Tajinder Singh, 21, - were playing on the edge of the lake last Saturday when the shallow water sucked in one of them. When the other two tried to save him, they too were drowned.

The three were among a 20-strong party that had arrived at a local youth hostel just a few hours earlier.

"The silt shelf at the edge of Ullswater drops steeply away and the friends would have suddenly been plunged into water more than 20 feet deep," Graeme Connacher, an officer with the coastguard in the North Lakes, Birmingham, was quoted as saying.

Local officials described the incident as an extraordinary tragedy, since the lake is seen as an idyllic picnic spot.