NEW DELHI - Indian rescuers were searching on Monday for 20 students and a professor swept away by waters released from a dam while the group was bathing in a river in the mountainous northern state of Himachal Pradesh.
Rescuers found four bodies and officials say prospects of finding the rest alive are bleak after the students, who were on a college trip from southern India, were swept away when the waters of the river Beas spiked dangerously high on Sunday.
Image: Bonath Shekar Naik shows a portrait of his son Rambabu Mahesh Kumar A. / AP
Bonath Shekar Naik shows a portrait of his son Rambabu, only one name available, one of the 24 students feared dead during a field trip near the mountain resort town of Manali, at the college premises of VNR Vignana Jyothi Institute of Engineering and Technology, on the outskirts of Hyderabad, India, Monday, June 9, 2014. The engineering students were taking photographs on Sunday evening at the banks of the Beas river when Larji hydropower station allegedly released water without warning.
"I think they were playing in the water," said a police official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. "The water rose and they were washed away."
Whether warning signals were sounded before the dam released water is a matter of dispute.
Read more:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/bathing-indian-students-swept-away-dam-release-n125986
Not a pleasant thought.
