Pune’s Alandi coaching academy sealed after 8 students drown at Diveagar beach

A day after eight students from Pune drowned and died at the Diveagar beach in Raigad district, watersport activities continued in full force with multiple operators functioning on the beach. No lifeguard was present at the scene.

Watersports operators on the beach also function as lifeguards, and were the ones who pulled the bodies of the eight students from the water.

Bhau Salunkhe, the owner of Mahalakshmi Watersports, said that some students who had come running from the South side of the beach approached him seeking help for their drowning friends around 4-4:30 pm on Thursday. He and his team then took two jet skis and rushed toward the drowning boys, but were too late.

“We pulled out seven bodies in half an hour. But later they told us another boy is missing. It took longer to find him. We gave them CPR but it was clear to me they were already dead,” Salunkhe said.

The police and village sarpanch say that such incidents were not common at the beach. According to information provided by Santosh Awati, Assistant Police Inspector at Dighi Coastal Police Station, the last drowning incident happened in March, where the deceased was found to be drunk. An incident involving a drowning had taken place at the nearby Velas beach in 2024.

Written to authorities multiple times: sarpanch

Sarpanch Vijay Todankar said that the Gram Panchayat had written multiple times to the Maritime Board authorities to provide a lifeguard at the beach.

Todankar shared a copy of a letter written in April 2023 by the then sarpanch of Diveagar to the “Regional Port Officer, Maharashtra Maritime Board, Alibaug-Raigad” with The Indian Express. The letter said the Gram Panchayat did not have necessary funds for a lifeguard and watchtower at the beach and that the board should immediately provide funds for the same.

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Todankar, who belongs to the Indian National Congress, said, “The incident is extremely sad for our whole town. I blame the government as well because they have neglected the safety of the beach.”

On why there was no precaution board on the beach, Todankar said that the incident happened when the panchayat was in the process of putting up a board.

Students did not know how to swim: enquiry

A preliminary enquiry by police indicated that the student who drowned did not know how to swim, said Deputy Superintendent of Police Raju Sonawane. He said that the investigation was underway and no crime had been registered against any involved parties till the evening of October 2.

Cooperating with police: Academy owners

One of the owners of the coaching institute, Amar Adak, told The Indian Express he started the institute four years ago and this was a yearly trip he had been conducting with Class 11 students for the last three years.

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“The main attraction of the trip is the Raigad fort which we visited in the morning and then we usually spend only an hour at the beach. That is when this incident happened. We are devastated. Online some are saying we ran away but we are at Diveagar and cooperating with the police,” he said.

Describing how the incident happened, he said, “I had asked students who only knew how to swim to go in, but I don’t know how many of them actually knew swimming. The girls were standing near the shore but the boys went deeper, the water was above waist level. We got pulled away due to the tide and there was a sudden hole on the left side. All of us, including me, fell into that hole. Two other students who could swim well and I saved some boys, but we could not save the others. Then we called the watersport operators.”

The students were charged a fee of Rs 2,000 per person for the trip and a consent form was signed by their parents, photos of which are with The Indian Express.

The bodies were pulled out of the water around 5:30 pm on Thursday and then taken to the primary health centre at Borli Panchatan. From there, the bodies were sent to Shrivardhan Sub District Hospital after 10 pm and post-mortems were conducted as respective families of the students arrived at the hospital. The bodies were then handed over to the families and the last body left the hospital by 5 am on October 2.

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Dr Kaustubh Kelaskar of the Shrivardhan Hospital said, “Postmortems found the reason for the death of all eight students was drowning.”