Two missing school students who drowned while bathing in the Mahananda Barrage near Phulbari in Siliguri were found dead on Tuesday morning. National Disaster Response Force (1) teams recovered both bodies after conducting a search operation in the river. Phansidewa police station sent the bodies for post-mortem to North Bengal Medical College and Hospital after identification.
Three students of Narayana School located near Jotiakali went to bathe in the Mahananda Barrage on Sunday along with their friends. Divyansh Shah was rescued by local people, but Pragjyoti Das and Mohammad Safayel Hussain drowned in the river. Both were tenth-grade students living in the school hostel. Pragjyoti was from Malda, while Safayel Hussain was a resident of Bangladesh.
Rescue teams and police searched for the two students continuously since the incident occurred. No trace of them was found during searches until Monday night. The rescue team resumed the search early Tuesday morning and recovered both bodies from the river within about an hour. Rescue officials stated that both bodies were found close to each other.
