Four minor children met with watery grave in Ranjangaon

Lokmat News Network

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:

In a tragic incident, four school-going students, who had gone for swimming in a percolation tank got drowned at Ranjangaon on Thursday afternoon.

Of the four deceased, two were real brothers and the other two were their friends. The names of the deceased include Afroz Javed Shaikh (14), Abrar Javed Shaikh (12), Bishwajeet Kumar Sukhdev Upadhyay (12) and Kunal Anil Dalvi (13). The jawans of fire brigade sub-station (Waluj) fished out their bodies today at 8.30 pm.

It is learnt that Javed Shaikh’s two sons Afroz and Abrar along with their friends Bishwajeet and Kunal step out of their homes for playing in the nearby ground on Thursday at 2 pm. When the kids did not return home by 5 pm, Javed Shaikh along with his relatives started searching for them. While they were passing through the percolation tank near Bankarwadi (in Ranjangaon). They spotted the clothes of Afroz, Abrar and two others lying on the ridge of the tank. Javed could not resist himself from crying. In the meantime, the relatives accompanying him alerted the Waluj’s fire brigade sub-station, MIDC Waluj police station and also informed the villagers.

The death news spread like wildfire and attracted a large gathering of villagers near the tank. Fire Brigade’s P K Chaudhary, K T Suryanwanshi, P K Hazare, N S Kumawat, S B Mahale, Y D Kale and S B Shendge with the help of villagers fished out their bodies at 8.30 pm.

In the meantime, acting upon the information, the deputy commissioner of police Nitin Bagate, police inspector Avinash Aghav, Ganesh Tathe, PSI Pundalik Dake, Shivaji Ghorpade and Yogesh Shelke reached the spot and sent the bodies for post-mortem to government hospital in grampanchayat’s ambulance with the help of villagers.

Pall of gloom descended

A pall of gloom descended in Ranjangaon village over the sudden demise of the four school students. Good samaritans like Prabhakar Mahalkar, Dattu Hiwale, Deepak Bade, Javed Shaikh, Sainath Jadhav, Deepak Sadavarte and others helped in fishing out the bodies.

It seems that the students could not guess the depth of the tank. Hence they all would have drowned in an attempt to save one another. One month ago, Bajajnagar’s Chaitali Rahul Deshmukh (11) and Samarth Rahul Deshmukh (07) had also drowned in an open pit filled with waste water on December 15.

Shock to family

The grief-struck family could not control their emotions and tears. Seeing this the eyes of the villagers also welled up with tears. Afroz was studying in a madrasa at Waluj, while Abrar was a student of Sairam English School in Ranjangaon, said the relatives.